Shrinking the Boundaries of Ignorance

Thursday's class was on expansion. We discussed how most motivations are out of fear or love, and what it means to be mature. It's interesting because in my personality class we had about a bazillion different attributes of a mature person (responsible, helps others, financially stable, etc.), but the real, defining attribute of a mature person is loving others. I mean, all those other things are nice (having an area of expertise, influence, etc.), but no one's going to give a darn unless you like them.

We also discussed how there are two different ways of knowing something. The example in class we used was water. So, you can know that water is made up of H2O and that it has polar molecules and is a solvent, etc., etc. But you don't really KNOW water until you drink it. It's like that story where the 2 guys die and they're asked what they know about Jesus. One says all the facts about the life of Jesus, and the other recognizes that the interviewer is, in fact, Jesus. The same thing happens to me with people sometimes. I'll know their name, major, horrible secret, but I won't really KNOW the person (learning a person from the inside out instead of vice versa). Hmm... sad.

Okay, so this was a class on expansion. So we practiced using the Internet. I love the Internet. It was a lot like finding the answer to a Board question. I think that's a reason I like writing for the Board - I get to learn and expand on things that I wouldn't normal think about. For instance, this morning I just answered a question about "The Last Unicorn." It reminded me about how in my childhood, I desperately believed that I was a unicorn, just like in this book/movie. It also reminded me of this book I bought online when I was a kid called Are You a Unicorn? The Mission and Meaning of Life. This was a skinny book(let) that analyzed the characters in The Last Unicorn, as well as comparing unicorns to the tribe of Ephraim and drawing some connections between unicorns and Jesus. It also mentioned how the lion is a symbol of Judah. But the part that really drew me to this book was the Unicorn as a personality type. It suggested that some people are unicorns who long for peace, love children, are really naive, etc. As a kid (I don't remember how old I was... too young to be going around on the Internet buying things), I really bought into this. I still like the idea, actually. Most people like feeling special somehow.

Being active in one's education requires more than doing homework, but unfortunately that's what our classes train us to do. I think I ranted on that before somewhere. Oh no, someone else did. See here.

[I just used spellcheck and I didn't mispell anything! I'm so proud of myself! :-D]
[Wow I just misspelled misspell... this is sad...]