September 02, 1999
Ewe Live, Ewe Learn
Sometimes I feel like a sheep. Or, alternately, a sponge.
I spent about four hours on the phone with Brand last night. Er, this morning. Not an unusual occurance. In an average week, I probably spend at least ten hours on the phone with him. (At $0.05 a minute? What's to worry?) We talk about anything and everything. Often, I end up learning something. In fact, I almost always end up learning something. Last night it was epistemology and historical speculation as opposed to historical 'fact'. Epistemology is the study of how we know what we think we know, what methods we use to study things. And a lot of ancient history, I learned, isn't proven fact at all, but rather is a series of widely accepted theories based on the little we do know. (Actually, I think I already knew that... I just got a few concrete examples last night.) Oh, and we covered a smidgen of India's ancient history. Yeah, I know. I'm a geek. I eat this stuff up. History, philosophy, all of that. It tickles my brain.
While I'd say that Brand and I are probably equal in terms of pure native intelligence, he's almost got a Ph.D, and I got maybe halfway through a B.A. The gap isn't in intelligence, but rather in knowledge and skills. It's a gap I feel pretty keenly at times. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I necessarily feel inferior to him. I don't. We took different paths early on. What I missed out on in formal education, I more than made up for in life experience and learning about me and how I work. But I crave the knowledge that he has. I kept asking last night, "Are you sure I can't have your brain? Can't I just sort of copy the files from your brain to mine?" Unfortunately he said no, so I guess I gotta do things the hard way.
And that's just it. I see where intellectually I want to be, but I don't know how to get there. My first response is to start reading books about different topics that intrigue me. But I can't find the one book that has everything I want to learn! And reading more than one book would take too long, damn it. Ah yes... the desire for knowledge meets head on with the impatient and often lazy brain. It's not just that I want to know what Brand knows (and more). I want to know it NOW and I don't want to work for it. So you see the conflict.
It's times like this what I wish I wish I WISH I hadn't left college. I mean, ultimately it doesn't matter. I wasn't really ready to do any serious learning when I was in college. Now I am, and I can't afford to just submerge myself in it the way I want to.
I just realized what it is I need. I need a library card. I want books, scads of books, mountains of books... but I can't afford to buy all of them, and I don't want to buy something that turns out to be a rotten source of information. I need a library card! A library card. A night class or two in things that I want to learn, to hell with a degree program for now. And I have the tutor from hell who'll keep throwing things at me to be interested in.
But there's the rub. And this goes back to feeling like a sheep. As much as I adore Brand, our friendship sometimes feels a little one-sided. I feel like I learn and learn and learn from him, but I will always be several steps behind, no matter what. A part of me, petty or no, wants to be a few steps ahead in something at least. I mean, he teaches me so much... but what do I teach him? I can't think of a bloody thing. I'm the follower. I'm the apprentice who sits at the master's feet. It's a role I seem to choose often, as a great deal of my very close friendships are based on a similar interaction. But sometimes that role chafes at me a little.
And I don't want to spend so much time playing catch-up for all the things I don't know that I forget to stop and enjoy the learning process itself. There's so much to cover... I don't know where to start.
A sheep or a sponge? I so much want to think of myself as the latter... but so often I feel like the former.
Posted by Lisa at September 2, 1999 01:55 PM
