Padme: ”You’re a funny little boy. How do you know so much?”
Anakin Skywalker: ”I listen to all the traders and star pilots who come through here. I’m a pilot, you know, and someday I’m going to fly away from this place.”
Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace
There’s so much to learn in the brief time that I have here on Earth. Even if I lived to be 120, 150, 200 years old, I would still run out of time for learning all about all that interests me. I remember being Padawan Learner’s age and thinking that I would probably be able to learn everything that I wanted and needed to learn by the time I got out of university. I didn’t understand why anyone would ever get a Master’s Degree or Ph.D. I mean, like, ohmygod , didn’t they totally have anything better to do with their time?
I must officially be getting old, because I’ve recently begun wishing that I had more time for learning about all the interesting things in the world. There are the things I must know more about: such as, running our household more efficiently and reducing unnecessary expenses; things I want to know more about: such as, astronomy, history, classical literature, a handful of languages and where to get a chocolate croissant in Paris; and things that I don’t even know that I’m going to want to know about someday.
So, I do what I can. Not having traders and star pilots to talk with, I read and read and read. I read for knowledge and I read for entertainment. And I hope that, when all is said and done, I have passed that love of reading on to Padawan Learner. You can see what I’ve read recently and what I’m reading now at the page titled The Holocron, up above. As you can see there, I read my first Agatha Christie novel this summer and I’m finding them quite entertaining.
It took a long time for me to realize that I still wanted to learn a lot. I guess I wasn’t exactly the brightest kid to roam the planet. As a matter of fact I was lazy and dumb. I really try not to think of what could have been… It’s frustrating.
Instead I love that I get to learn with my children. I love to read history books to them and frequently thinking to myself “Oh, so that’s how it went. Cool.” I have to admit of course, that my parents weren’t all that much interested in what I was doing, just so long as I brought home good grades. And if I didn’t, I’d get a good talking to from my dad, after which they went back to business as usual… and so did I.
I’m excited to be able to present the world to my children and to tell them, go get it. Soak up as much as you can. I’ll be there to help you.
I know what you mean. Sometime around my 40th birthday, I realized there was a lot of stuff I needed to know. So began the quest for knowledge, and I see no end in sight!