When dad passed on when I was 10, I remembered being so fearful of a lot of things in my life. About mum, about brother who at that time was having a really tough time accepting his passing on, about sister who was still such a baby then, about house – on who's going to take care of us, about having a male figure to protect us, and most importantly about being financially stable and for the three of us to be able to carry on with studies for the rest of our lives.
We were blessed, that late dad had money in all sorts of savings, and ways. As a librarian, mum has always upholded the importance of reading. Just reading for that matter, it doesn’t matter whether we’d be picking up something that is probably ancient years old, from today’s paper, anything from the TV to basically to just being able to absorb information from anything that we read online or offline. Good or bad. As a result, our house has stacks of books lying everywhere, racks of books, encyclopedias, the list just goes on.
Watching The Reader last week when I was on my one week long break was nothing but a tap on the shoulders of how important, greatly important education is. Kate Winslet pursued an affair with a sixteen year old boy, and in exchange for sex, Winslet requested to be read, everyday, because she loved stories, every time before they do it. After months of continuing their relationship and as both find it more and more difficult to fit and adjust to each others’ emotional needs, Winslet decided to leave him cold on a casual weekday noon. With no letters, no reasons. As time pass by, and as the boy grew older he continued with his tertiary education and attended a law school and met her for the second time. Only this time, it was in the court. She was convicted over approving papers on disallowing inmates not to be released during a massive fire. Stamped and signed by her. But the issue was, for the whole of her life, she has always been illiterate. She couldn’t read the papers, she couldn’t read the signatures, she couldn’t read the allegations, she could read nothing. So basically, she was framed. And he was the only who could attest to it. But when she was put in a position to object the accusations, she gave in and took the life sentence instead, all because of shame.
This is a story of how one depicts the great importance of education. How sometimes, we the rest of the world so shamelessly take for granted the education that we have, both earned and awarded. Theoretical or practices. How we so absent mindedly choose to succumb to laziness to things as simple as ‘thinking over a situation, solving a crisis’. We just give up.
When so clearly we have all the knowledge that one could use and practice to solve it. We even have the education to be strong in dire times, the chants to keep ourselves grounded, we are of well informed generation.
Everyday when I learn something new, ordinary or not I appreciate that my mental capability (though not the greatest) could cope with it, and I pray that I am always, or rather hopes to be always inquisitive. To be sincerely interested in a lot of things in life, simple or not. I am not the smartest, but I love finding out about things.
Education and knowledge is limitless. Does dropping out from college but learning everything from scratch about music, chords, notes is considered picking up an education? Yes. Does quitting your job and learning everything about the total opposite of your career spectrum say picking up on architecture when you’ve done greeting cards all your life is considered an education? Yes. (Yes I took this from 500 days of summer). Is learning how to do hopscotch when all you’ve played in your whole life is uh, iPod an education, simply put, yes. My lecturer once said that education is a privilege. It's not a necessity.
I figured all of us must be open to learning something new everyday, maybe even of something greater, like investing on philanthropy, or like the what other country is facing, like what other religion is really like (just the other day we were talking about it). Ignorance is not always a bliss you know. It’s a saying we want to believe that it's better to be that way, but there are just some things you are at greater advantage... if you just know more than the person standing next to you.
Comments
I love reading article like this.. =p