Last year I experienced a complete dependency on certain substances to control my life. Coffee, black tea, green tea, Yerba Maté, chili peppers, cayenne pepper, endless exercise, electronic/highly stimulating music for energy. And sleeping tea, valerian root, the occasional melatonin, kava etc etc for relaxation and rest. My normal system didn't function anymore.
It seems like the more we work against our circadian rhythms, our natural wake/sleep cycles, the more we have to drug ourselves. How horrible! We totally trick our bodies into doing more work than they're really intended for. Somebody please try to tell me that I'm wrong! I'm pretty sure that we are meant to wake up with the sun and chirping birds, and sleep with night's velvet blanket and stars. We should also move so much more than we do. We are not meant to sit in square, gray rooms, hunched over sliced trees and attempt to explain the universe. No... no, I'm sorry. We are not supposed to do that. We are constantly "advised" by our society to get some exercise and move a bit. Well obviously! We are made to do that... How ridiculously far have we come away from our own nature? To a point where we have to squeeze in 30 minutes of exercise a day? Where we complain that we're tired and stressed all the time? Excuse me... what the hell? We're supposed to be out in the world, moving!
I hate rooms! I hate being inside! I'm so sick of sitting all the time! I just want to get up and get out and GO! And I can't. Because it's fucking cold outside that my brain stops working. And my brain stops working inside because it's overloaded with pointless information about stupid things that we don't need to occupy ourselves with. What happened to the good old days of trial and error? Why does everything have to be so exact and scientific? I assure you that children learn exponentially more about the world by putting random objects in their mouths, toddling around in the grass, and learning through their own experience in life, than by sitting in front of informational kid-tv-shows that tell them the colors of the rainbow.
We have completely stopped the experience part of learning. Everything is so goddam theoretical. What good does theory do? If a child is drowning in a pool, will your calculating the water pressure and the potential lung deflation factor or whatever, do anything to save the child? No sir. You will have to jump and pull the child out without a second thought. Action. Movement. REAL fucking LIFE.
This experience > theory is wonderfully captured in a dialogue between Prof. Umbridge and Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:
Umbridge: It is a view of the Ministry that a theoretical knowledge will be sufficient to get you through your examinations, which after all is what school is all about!
Hermione: And how is theory supposed to prepare us for what's out there?
God... that's the most memorable and amazing quote out of all the books. So. Damn. Beautiful.
I am experiencing a perfectly parallel problem in college. It's all about stupid exams. Ones that have absolutely NOTHING to do with real life. Screw that. Who needs stupid, structured, gray, ugly, German, university buildings with professors who do nothing but scoff at the "lesser-minded" students and remark that "exams are all"... Well, maybe some people like to believe that they are better off in that system, but not me. No way. Not going to waste six years of my life to inflate my head with nothingness. I would rather increase my muscle-memory, and expand my catalogue of life experiences.
So what does 9pm coffee even do for me? Nothing but waste my precious adrenaline and dehydrate my restless body. I just want out. Out of this life where I learn nothing and do nothing and sit sit sit SIT with theoretical shit-books and cram pointless facts into my head.
I learned more in 3rd grade that I have here at university. That was a year where I built a house out of self-made bricks, planted and cared for an entire garden, learned to bake bread, learned all about soil, compost, worms, recycling, shearing sheep, carding wool, dying wool, weaving, sewing, crocheting, speaking spanish, went wwoofing for the first time, learned how compostable toilets work, the difference between upstream and downstream, how fog moves, that radishes are the fastest-growing vegetable, how to plow a field with a horse, how to milk a cow, how a smithy works, how to milk a goat, how the spice of spicy peppers is concentrated in the seeds, how tadpoles develop, how to blow easter eggs and make quiche out of the leftovers, what to do when there's an earthquake, experienced my first earthquake, learned how snails don't like copper, how to paint well with watercolors, how to play a flute, how to read music, how to act on stage, the difference between a horses's canter and gallop, how a sewing machine works, all the Beatles songs, how AIDs is transmitted, how the southern half of the United States looks like, how to brand leather, I had my first job in a juice-bar as a dishwasher/vegetable cutter... ON top of grammar, spelling, the times tables, long division, long multiplication, history of ancient egypt/ the old testament, and more and more and more... Third grade was so awesome. I think I remember more from that year than I do from what I learned today...
Fourth grade was great too: how to tie knots, how to sail a boat, how to play soccer, how to pan for gold, all about scandinavian/ norse mythology, how to square dance, how to start a fire with flint and steel, how to keep that fire going all night, how to navigate through the woods blindfolded... I'm getting sick of typing so I'll just cut off here...
So what's the answer? Break the stupid studious box of theory and facts and Live. Let those walls of pointless memorization crumble into dust of forgotten stuff and move out like a wild horse running through the Great Plains....
Movement. Action. LIFE! It happens out there, and simultaneously inside of us... but definitely not in something that can be measured in cubic meters...
No comments:
Post a Comment