In Life, Novelty is always challenging.
The exploration of new learning paradigms can cause anxiety in even the most experienced learners. The familiar is safe. Thus, even experienced explorers of manifold disciplines of thought are cautious to enter the realms of the unknown. But we are paragons of Life itself. Curiosity, imagination and the possibility of expanding our consciousness beckon to those who are imaginative enough to enter the portals of the unknown. Thus, since the dawn of time, learners of all ages and all inclinations have sought to learn something new, satiate their imagination and explore the unknown, even in perilous voyages.
The explorer of new experiences must possess core qualities to enable him/her to absorb maximum insight and extract wisdom from the adventure into a novel area of human experience.
The first core quality is critical thinking. The exploration of novelty requires a healthy dose of skepticism, wrapped in the gentle cocoon of wonder! Critical thinking enables the learner to look at any object, or experience or domain with fresh eyes, unencumbered by the fetters of past doctrines which may condition the mind to think in mechanical ways. Original, fresh insights bestow their graces on such an attitude.
The next core quality is facility with instrumentation or the language used to explore a domain. When I say language, I do not mean only the linguistic families created by the human tongue. Chess is a language. Algebra is a language. Cooking is a language. Basketball is a language. Ethics is a language. Even the Methods of Research, the holy grail of the sciences, is a language unto itself. So, language here refers to those instruments, structures, and methodologies that a learner utilizes to probe an object, a construct, an experience, a domain or a phenomenon. Many of the critical languages of Earth life are learned in elementary school. This is why, in many ways, elementary schooling does indeed provide the foundational structure that any learner must acquire to build a cognitive database that he/she can enhance later on. The better your foundational structure, the higher shall be the citadel that you can build. And the more striking is your apotheosis.
The next core quality is willingness to undergo apprenticeship. The great guilds of Western Europe during the Middle Ages built on this core quality to produce the artists, the scientists, the poets and the architects who engineered the historical efflorescence known as the Renaissance. The exemplars of this tradition included such luminaries as Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael and Michaelangelo. Combine willingness to undergo apprenticeship with the virtue of hard work and determination, and you have the potential to become a master in your domain.
The children of our generation seemed to have forgotten this core quality. Because of the advent of the computer revolution and cybernetic technology, the virtues of apprenticeship seemed to have been forgotten entirely. Quick moves to success are heralded, and the long process of forging domain mastery is sometimes relegated to the background. Nowadays, the spectacular maneuver is acclaimed, but true genius lies in the details. True genius is nurtured for a long, long time, not produced overnight in a sensation of glamour.
No. If we want to be masters of a domain, we cannot escape the long night of apprenticeship. Because this long night of apprenticeship and training and education will incubate the learner, synthesize various informational gradients in his brain, and integrate them into a coherent whole. The longer this process, the better is the result. It is not a joke when the ancient masters quantified the mastery of a domain into a timeline:
10,000 hours.
That is the minimum number of hours that any learner must invest in order to reach mastery of a domain!
Look at the lives of the domain masters in the history of humanity. These adepts forged their determination into an iron will, experienced the long night of apprenticeship, paid an investment of 10,000 hours or more and became the masters of their fields.
Plotinus, Mysticism.
Pythagoras, Mathematics.
Lao Tzu, Philosophy.
Sun Tzu, Strategic Management.
Leonardo Da Vinci, Art.
Morihei Ueshiba, Aikido.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poetry.
Steve Rune Lundin, Epic Fantasy.
Bobby Fischer, Chess.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Architecture.
Carl Jung, Analytical Psychology.
Michael Jordan, Basketball.
Marcelo Hilario Del Pilar, Journalism.
Jose Rizal, Literature.
Manny Pacquiao, Boxing.
Miriam Defensor Santiago, Law.
And the list goes on and on. Do you want to be like these people? Do you want to emulate these masters? Then invest in the long night of apprenticeship, and someday you shall truly, truly emerge in the efflorescence of domain mastery.
The next core quality is discrimination/discernment. Develop this, and you can enter any conversation with confidence. Discrimination functions at every stage of the learning process. In the beginning stages of learning, discrimination functions when we look at the whole wisdom quest with fresh eyes, and listen to our teachers with fresh ears. During the long voyage of learning the intricacies of a domain, discrimination functions in looking at heuristics and metrics with precision. During the long night of apprenticeship, discrimination functions when the learner is open to integrative themes with other domains and disciplines. Finally, during the stages of synthesis, when creativity begins to manifest and bloom, discrimination functions when the learner is able to absorb criticism and utilize it for continuous growth. Learning is an open-ended process. Cosmic life is in love with creativity!
The next core quality is listening. Listening is not just the physical reception of sound waves plunging into the physiological apparatus of the human ear. It is much, much more than that. Listening is total receptivity to all the possible data permutations available in a moment in time. And consequently, the complete transmutation of that data into consciousness by interpreting it from a variety of perspectives in order to arrive at optimum symmetry.
And the final core quality is love. Love your domain, love your course, and love your work.
Why study algebra if your true love is cooking? Why study engineering if your true love is psychology? Why study psychiatry if your true love is agriculture? If your current path is not your true love, then you always have the choice to discover your true love, and unleash your inner muse.
Combine all these core qualities, dear learners, and you are on your way to domain mastery.
Postcript: If you are a learner intent on domain mastery, you automatically become a builder. A builder of your own beautiful, significant, meaningful future. And, so may I present this literary masterpiece, an immortal poem by one of the greatest poets of all time, to inspire us all in the universal, timeless, endless joy of learning:
The Builders (By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.
Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.
For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.
Truly shape and fashion these;
Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.
In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods see everywhere.
Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.
Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.
Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.
Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky.
elrimban@2022
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