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Today's
Meditation:
Why
do we tend to study just what we have to study in order to
get by? During the many years of our educations,
most of us do the bare minimum in order to get by--we read
just what's assigned, we write just what we have to.
But through study we can literally change our lives--we
can open up new vistas and new possibilities; we can
recognize new beauties and new truths that we couldn't
even imagine before; we can find more meaning in more
things in our lives, broadening our perspective to make us
happier and healthier people.
As
we study more, we see further into the depths of the
topics we're exploring; as we see further into the depths,
we're more likely to recognize the inherent beauty of the
objects in the ways that they're put together and
exist. Seeing that beauty tends to help us to
realize the amazing way that objects in our universe exist
and grow and change. Seeing a flower is a beautiful
experience; understanding how a flower goes from seed to
plant to flower and then to producing more seeds gives us
a glimpse into a beautiful reality that is breathtaking in
its complexity--and simplicity.
Einstein
calls the influence of such beauty "liberating,"
for it pulls us from the limited perspectives that we fall
into in our day-to-day lives; it takes us into another
world in which nothing is impossible and potential is
unlimited. And once we see that potential and
recognize it for what it is, we become different people
with a broader worldview and the potential to teach others
what we've learned ourselves.
Sometimes
we must study the bare minimum. But other
times--especially if the topic intrigues us--the effort
that we put into study definitely will pay us back
dividends that are truly unimaginable if we don't do it.
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