Teach Me Tonight

One of my favorite sayings has always been, " When you stop learning, you start dying." I know that this one sticks deep inside me because I've spent pretty much my whole life in a classroom (with breaks of a year or two thrown in between programs of study). I tell myself that all my schoolwork is aimed at an improved way of life and security for myself and my family. That's true, but it's not as simple as that. There's something in those classrooms that I need, there's something there that helps me cope with the rest of this civilization we've built around ourselves.

I shared a dream once with my dearest friend; my dream, throughout my youth, was to have lived long enough ago to have escaped humanity. I always wanted to be a Mountain Man. To live on my own in the woods, with little or no contact with other people. A large part of this dream remains with me today. I feel fully alive and happy when I am in the woods and far removed from the modern world. There are a number of great books by James Fennimore Cooper (The Leatherstocking Tales) that tell the story of a white man that joins the Delaware indian tribe and becomes one of the noble savages. These books were written in the early-to-mid 1800's and most people find them slow/hard reading. I find these books as easy to get through as any bestseller put out today. But, for me, there's something more to the Leatherstocking Tales than just a good story; I find myself going back to these books every few years to re-escape into my imaginary life in the woods amongst the Indians. There's this part of me that wants to be alone (at least from the crowd) and wants to escape modern society... So where's the tie to the point of today's journal? When I shared my dream with my friend, she told me that I was far too much a people person to ever be able to live like that and that I'd be horribly lonely in no time.

In a way she was right. What I would be lonely for would be the interaction with other minds and spirits that only come to me in private times with my close friends and in discussing ideas in class. The friends that are able to touch my heart can be counted on one hand and are, unfortunately, busy trying to get through their lives just as I am and can't be with me always. I sometimes meet new people, at work or in some group that I belong to, and I can see the spark of true spirituality within them. When that happens, I am almost moved to the point of saying, "Hey, let's get a cup of coffee or a drink". But of course, in our world, we leave each other alone to our own paranoias. I sometimes regret the number of friends that I never knew because of the walls that we keep between each other.

So the only place I can get my fix for other souls is in school. There, we are encouraged to think outside of ourselves, we struggle together with new ideas and new ways of thinking. we are exposed to great minds and we expose ourselves to each other as we try to contribute to the communal act of learning. It's not much easier here to find others who sparkle than it is in the rest of the world, but there are enough of them, and we can be honest with each other in ways we never would be anywhere else. I can ask for that cup of coffee and conversation and expect it to happen. My only regret is that school is a "network" and the people that I meet there have drifted from my life as fast as they've entered. They're as impermanent as every thing else in this world. I'll take that bargain and if I have to live in this shallow and misdirected society, I guess I'll always be going to school. It's one of the few things that make sense to me.

Still, I wouldn't mind giving the whole Mountain Man thing a try. I bet (if I had some books with me) I could go a long time without being lonely.