I was sitting in my Theory of Knowledge class today, listening to my teacher giving a lecture (a usual activity), when I heard him say something that caught me completely off guard. He said:
"Everything that travels across your synapses has the potential to enrich your life."
I thought, what a profound idea. It's the ultimatum of optimism of course, but then optimism is one of the greatest wonders of life. Being negative is easy, being optimistic takes thought and effort. Optimism is the only idea that will get us anywhere. Think about that quote for a moment...
Imagine viewing the world through that statement. Everything, EVERYTHING, has the potential to enrich your life. Just a few minutes ago, I walked up the stairs of my house to reach my computer. When I was baby, I bet I couldn't reach the top of the stairs by myself, but now it is so easy that I don't even think about it. Right now, I am having a very difficult time in math. I have to work really hard at it, and even then I often need tutoring. But maybe math is like a staircase, and after a while I won't need help, after many years of trying it will be so easy I won't even have to think about it. And maybe at the top I will finally see why I climbed the staircase in the first place. Even the smallest things have the ability to make you see something differently then you did before. They can allow you to construct a new idea, or to remember something extraordinary about yourself that had slipped through the cracks made by age and hardship. Right now my desk is cluttered with materials from my life. A lace headband, my iPhone, a language learning program, a drawing, a magazine, a pile of gum, a staple-less stapler, a pinwheel. Each of them say a little bit about me. If I ever lose myself all I have to do is look right here. I don't know yet exactly how I'm going to use this new perspective in my own life, but I can't wait to find out. I'm looking forward to things that I never look forward to (like homework), and tomorrow seems like it could actually be really different from today. I feel like this is the true way to appreciate life, maybe the meaning is in the details, and now maybe I finally have the lens to make use of them.
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A profound thought indeed. Enjoying the little things has brought me so much joy in the past. Its something I forgot and need to learn again. I have heard the way the brain works is that its always looking for patterns. When it starts to predict patterns correctly, it focuses on something else. You don't even think about the location of a door knob unless its changed. Its so hard to find something unexpected in the mundane. That is the other way of looking at it. I know that the chair underneath me right now isn't going to move. Not a lot of enrichment there. And yet, there is so much happening right now though between my ass and this chair. To feel gravity push me into it, the force of that push completely depended on how massive the earth is. The surface that I am sitting on is mostly empty space. It is the repulsion of like charges between the electrons in my ass and the electrons in the seat that keep me from sitting in the seat instead. The world is a wonderful place. I accept you as an electronic person in my small tribe:). I have a minor in math and I know some math majors. You only need to ask for math advice...
ReplyDeletehahahahahaha xD
ReplyDeleteoh my goodness..thank you for giving me such a light-hearted start to my day. I will probably never think about sitting in a chair the same way again. xP
Thanks also for my acceptance lol ;P, but how am I an electronic person?
As for the math thing, most of my questions are ones about specific details in the problem that are keeping me from the correct answer, and not on conceptual understanding. Thus, I think it would be fairly difficult, not to mention inefficient, for me to try to explain my question to u and for u to provide a meaningful answer. Still, when we get to taylor and power series stuff I might throw a question or two your way. Lol, more likely though, I'll just rant about it on here and then maybe u can explain to me why I need to know that sinx= 1 over 2i times e to the ix power minus e to the -ix power. Or why it's important that g(0.2), when put into the equation 1 minus x squared divided by 2! plus x to the fourth divided by 4! minus x to the sixth divided by 6! plus x to the eighth divided by 8!, equals 0.9800665778...
I think its bad form to comment on a comment on a comment, but whatever:). You are an electronic person kinda like that is how you exist to me and my group. You are still a person, but the way I access you is via computer. If my electricity went out, Hannah would go away also, so....you are an electronic person. It is what I am to you too I guess. Taylor series are so awesome. You might think I am a dork, but I dont care. It is a beautiful way of approximating really fucked up functions. And your little sinx thingy sounds like euler's formula. As much as you might hate it, you will never get away from euler. Might as well get used to it :p. The other one just sounds like some bullshit. Math is beautiful, you just have to be fucked up to appreciate it.
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