The Enigma

This morning Tom emailed me with some deeply personal comments about his own experiences as a young fellow and how they are impacting him as an "aging" man. Tom is less verbose than I am, and he managed to bring to mind for me that one of my proposed "discussions" was about Enigma. I was thinking to discuss this  sometime soon, but the poignancy of his mail encouraged me to spend some time on a Sunday morning and exercise my two finger typing skills before my day got too complicated.

Enigma. Something that defies explanation by rational means. I suppose the very concept of trying to add value to young lives can be considered enigmatic. I refer back to an earlier comment that the more you understand, the harder it is to explain it. As one gains experience in life, as experience after experience come together like the pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle with no hard edges, slowly making a discernable and to some degree predictable pattern out of the mess of life's experiences, it becomes harder and harder teach that it is the process in which lies the value rather than the end result.

Read that again.... that is the enigma....an argument against itself.

Not everyone likes jigsaw puzzles. The presentation packaging gives them an image of what to expect in the end result. Why take it further? Its a picture of Constable's painting of Dedham Mill. So what? Who was Constable anyway? When does the pub open?

Others may look at the packaging, the same packaging and see an amazing image, and be curious about the way it impacts their eyes and senses and be curious as to who and what this fellow Constable was and what was he trying to achieve and go on to look him up in the Library or on the Internet and use that as a springboard  to further exploration of art and culture

Others may take the puzzle, open the packaging, scatter the pieces, and simply become immersed in the act of assembly of the adjacently matching elements of the puzzle, entralled by the complexity of the image. An urge to complete the task for the sake of it.

And still others may become immersed in the complexity of the assembly but carefully study the elements contained in each small piece and then look at the complexity of the art as it assembles and perhaps be driven to go and find the artwork in its original form and stare into its rurality.

Each response is a valid response. How each response comes about  is an enigma. Clearly each response  brings about a different result. It is clearly inappropriate to judge the response, but it is part of human reality to consider the response in light of the viewer's self perception and sense of their own life.

Parents, in their own way, informed by their own sense of being and aggregated experience in life, try to influence  to a greater or lesser degree the experiences of their children. Adults  do the same for the young, and older people do the same for younger adults. It is a cycle, a natural cycle. It is an enigma that seems to grow stronger with age. Most everyone  experiences that feeling of wanting to add value to younger lives to some degree or another  and the older we become, the less we seem able to explain to our younger cohorts how important and valuable it is to learn in this way.

At the same time, winding the clock backwards instead of forwards, the young seem, the younger they get, to reject that the experience of others has any value. There is a striving in the human animal to learn from experience, but their own, not that of others which may project them further forwards. It seems that we are destined for the most part to continually re-invent forward motion, thus standing largely on the spot, with perhaps only marginal forward motion evident.

The power of the human mind is so vast, yet we faithfully resist applying it. In a technological sense we seem to need bigger and bigger hard drives in our computers to store and to be able to re-use more and more "already done" work, yet we cannot make the connection that this applies to life also. Sadly we seem to find the offer of input an affront to our personal growth. This is especially noticable in the young. Yet we must not give up in our effort to add value to young lives, no matter how fruitless and frustrating it may feel at times. Once in a while it is welcomed.

It is noticable that Newton was correct. When mankind accepts the foundation of knowledge we have already developed and stands on its shoulders and looks further ahead, we can make vaste strides. Yet when we must keep re-inventing old things we can actually lose knowledge. There are many examples of lost learning. We keep finding ancient things again and what they show us about  understandings we have since lost  is actually awe inspiring at times, humbling at others.

What an Enigma!