Wonderland

That's one chaotic idea..

So, I've been reading "The Curious incident of the Dog in the Night-time" few days ago:
"Siobhan says people go on holidays to see new things and relax, but you can see new things by looking at earth under a microscope or drawing the shape of the solid made when 3 circular rods of equal thickness intersect at right angles. And I think that there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly. And also, a thing is interesting because of thinking about it and not because of being new. For example, Siobhan showed me that you can wet your finger and rub the edge of a thin glass and make a singing noise. And you can put different amounts of water in different glasses and they make different notes because they have what are called different resonant frequencies, and you can play a tune like Three Blind Mice. And lots of people have thin glasses in their houses and they don't know you can do this."


That part really got me thinking. Despite the fact that the narrator of the book is an autistic (which means that  may be it would occasionally be weird to agree with his thoughts), I found this particular thought very interesting. To think of the wonders contained in every single object lying innocently in front of you all day but you just got so used to their presence that they don't interest you anymore! To think that some people dedicate their lives to studying the properties of these objects or manufacturing them while you don't pay them any attention at all!

There is an inexpressible joy in learning about diversities of things and sciences. And I mean really learning about them and not just reading a book or two on the subject.  A joy that is completely hindered by a rule that says that education has to be purposeful. Supposedly, you are learning so that you would be able to use your knowledge for the benefit of yourself and others and not just learning for the pleasure of it. That's basically why society invests in your education. This means that you will know lots of things about just one thing, and very little -or in some people's case, none- about everything else! As this sounds all mature and sensible and consistent with the purpose of our existence, I just can't help feeling a pang over all the things I'll never get to know.

I know it is not even in the human ability to know about everything. I've spent 5 years so far studying Medicine and I am supposed to have accumulated somewhere in my head an amount of knowledge equivalent to that spent time. An amount that's huge in itself as it might seem, it is nothing at all compared to all the amount of knowledge available in Medicine alone. So even if we forget about the morals and obligations of purposeful learning  and assume that you're going to divide your lifetime into 5-year intervals and spend each interval learning some science, you still won't be having enough time to be able to say that you know enough of it. And you would only have enough intervals to, say, cover for like a dozen of sciences and you wouldn't have enough time to know anything at all about all the others.

Still, a fascinating idea, that we are surrounded by the most amazing, most complicated universe of living and non living things, swarming with ideas and noise and languages and events. And that we get to be part of it for a short time, and only for one time, just one chance to experience it all, and we are destined to leave nearly knowing nothing of it.

Drop that childish nonsense and focus on reality. Reality says that I am fated to know so many things about one science that happens to be Medicine and that I won't even know enough of it. Reality says that I'll probably not know much about anything else because Medicine is a madly possessive science that clings to every bit of time and mind you have. And also reality says that all of these realities are perfectly normal and they shouldn't be bothering me at all. But me hopes that she would never give up to these realities, and that she would always curiously strive towards knowing more.