Ep. 12/ The Gentle Art of Learning
Learning to live or living to learn, that is the question!
Hey there fellow dwellers of the World Wide Web,
One of my absolute favorite things about being an adult is having the luxury, autonomy, and financial freedom to learn for the sheer joy of it. Not to chase grades or rack up medals, not to win quizzes or ace olympiads, but to satisfy an intrinsic desire to better understand this world that keeps on turning while taking all of us on a ride with it.
For example, just recently I learned about Prince Rupert’s Drops which are these tadpole-shaped glass beads known for the most enchanting contradiction of strength and fragility baked into their very structure. Their bulbous heads are like armored knights, able to withstand even the mightiest hammer blows. But their delicate, tapering tails are an altogether different story. The slightest tap is all it takes, and the entire drop erupts into a glittering explosion. It’s as if they borrowed a page from the legend of Achilles—strong everywhere except for one tiny, hidden vulnerability. What marvelous little legends in glass, holding both invincibility and fragility in the same form! A shimmering paradox just like us humans, I dare say.
Anyway, I digress, as I often do. What I’ve noticed is that the more I’ve tried to learn, or even just mumbled and bumbled through new ideas, the more I’ve come to realize that knowledge isn’t some panacea for all things life. And that’s okay. I’m not fooling myself into thinking this is some wildly productive endeavor. I’m not pretending that I am some clever girl hacking her way to self-improvement. I know that I’m just deeply curious and, okay, maybe slightly nosey (I mean what is history if not really good tea from way back when that is still somehow piping hot). Basically what I’m trying to say is, I like knowing how things came to be. I want to know what choices the people that came before me made and why, how they thought, what they hoped for, and feared. I don’t care about showing off or getting academic validation anymore. I want to learn about fascinating things that were invented or discovered, and the messy, brilliant, beautiful, or brutal stories behind them. I want to know how phrases and words came into being, how they traveled through time, slipped through tongues, and mutated along the way. I want to read about interesting people who may or may not have danced in the decadence of life but surely experienced the leisurely rot of time and did something gobsmacking with it regardless. All the while, I hope, I weave my own fabric of philosophy on the universe and all things in it.
I do this so that the next time I visit a friend’s place and spot a box of Goldfish crackers, I can tell them that love lives in their kitchen cabinet. After all, once upon a time in a postcard-perfect, Swiss town, a baker named Oscar J. Kambly created a fish-shaped cracker as a birthday gift for his Pisces wife. Isn’t it a delicious reminder that, sometimes, affection swims silently among the groceries?
I do this so that if a friend (Hi Vaishnavi!) ever asks me again, “Why should I choose life when choosing no life is also an option?” I’ll have an answer. Not just because Nietzsche spoke of amor fati and the will to power. Not because Camus saw meaning in defiantly affirming life despite its inherent absurdity. Nor because Epicurus saw happiness in modest pleasures, close friendships, and peace of mind. But because I’ve lived and questioned and learned. I’ve gathered ideas like trinkets, turned them over and over in my mind, and come to a way of thinking that feels like my own.
P.S. Don’t worry about me and Vaishu. That conversation was just a thought experiment. We’re both fine—and still very much enchanted by the strange yet improbable beauty of being here.
Until next time.
Xoxo
