Writing 101 assignment Day 5

You study, study, study, and at the end, you are lucky enough to discover the greatest gift of education: that you know nothing at all.

— E. J. Koh 고은지 (@thisisEJKoh) January 7, 2014

This sounds like something a young person would say. A person who just realized that traditional education will not teach you everything you need to know. Wow– it’s some kind of Satori, man. Or a Zen flash of knowledge. Never believe you own thoughts, my young friend, for they may be a passing illusion that knowing nothing is somehow an evolved state. This is not the Beginner’s Mind of Shunryu Suzuki, but the closed mind of someone who’s decided that this is how it is, and it shall always be.

I would have said something similar decades ago, when I lived in the purgatory of subconsciously feeling that nothing was black and white–and suffering because of it– but saying that things were this or that. Like education=knowing nothing. Non-education=knowing everything. Or something similar that I thought sounded impressive but really sounded naive. Before I realized that the true value of traditional education is that it can open your mind to many worlds, lives, possibilities and– most importantly- it can lead to a path of non-traditional education, which is truly living, moment by moment,  allowing whatever you feel or see or think to be felt and seen and thought without absolutes.

I do know things. I know things that I didn’t know many years ago. And years hence, I will know things that I did not know now. And I know that the things I think I know now will possibly change, or become more finely honed, or disappear.

Ah, what a person says when they still think eons lay between them and deterioration and death, when summer is endless and winter is imperceptible.