BY MR ENIOLORUNDA ISRAEL (Bsc)
JSS2 Class Teacher
It’s a harsh fact that every one of us is ignorant in some way. Although we tend to pretend otherwise, it’s impossible to know it all. A professor of medicine or mathematics is a total novice in Arabic Studies/language.
"Ignorance is our biggest collective secret". And it’s one of the scariest and most damaging realities of life, because those of us who are most ignorant and thus most likely to spread ignorance are often the ones who don’t know it.
If you have never changed your mind about one of your beliefs, if you have never questioned the fundamentals of your opinions, and if you have no inclination to do so, then you are likely ignorant about something you think you understand. Just move one step outside of your social arena and find someone (online or offline) who, in your opinion, believes, behaves, or handles certain aspects of life differently from you. Then, have a simple, honest, peaceful conversation with them. I promise it will do both of you lots of good. Many of the biggest misunderstandings in life could be avoided if we would simply take the time to ask, “What else could this mean?”
An expert is not a person who always has all the right answers; he/she’s the one who asks the right questions, consistently.
Very few of us actively seek new knowledge in this world on a daily basis. We get comfortable with what we know and we stop questioning things. On the contrary, we try to squeeze from the unknown the answers we have already shaped in our own minds judgments, justifications, validations, forms of consolation without which we might feel incomplete or off-center. To really ask something new is to open the door to being uncomfortable.
Monsters do exist in the real world, but in most cases they are too few in number to be truly dangerous in the long run. More dangerous are the common people with good intentions who are instantly ready to believe and act without asking questions.
If someone can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about how they answer you. You can be emotionally manipulated if you are asking wrong questions or when you seek knowledge deeply rooted in emotions.
What goes around comes around. No one has ever made themselves strong by showing how small someone else is. Everyone you meet is learning something, is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something. Know this, and be careful not to dehumanize those you disagree with. In our self-righteousness we can too easily become the very things we dislike in others.
Regardless of how much you know, or how many incredible questions you ask, you can never know it all. To believe that you do is proof of the contrary. The wilderness around us always holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask. And that’s a beautiful thing.
Although life will always be filled with unanswered questions, it’s the courage to seek the answers that counts — this journey is what gives life meaning. Ultimately, you can spend your life wallowing in frustration and misery, wondering why life has to be so complicated or you can be grateful that you are strong enough and smart enough to question your circumstances and grow from them.
In conclusion; we all need to be present and have patience with everything that remains unexplained in your heart and mind, to engage with people constructively today, including those who think differently and have diverse perspectives from ours, to ask questions, to listen closely, and to not just grow in knowledge, but to also be a person who gives back.
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