Learning

Following the trail, the scent, of an interest, takes you down tunnels and avenues and roads of inquiry, that can take up a whole day and more. Like a fox following the scent of a chicken. An addictive sort of self comforting, self fulfilling, self indulging, seeking the ultimate thrill – the catch, the kill. The kill, the discovery, the finding, never quells the urge to learn, merely catches us up with another train to jump onto. It’s wonderful and it’s addictive. It’s mind based, the human mind running on auto pilot, systems set up to enquire.

What else? Well, there’s the family in front of me. The collective. We are four individuals, each with the drive described above. If we bumbled around all day and evening only following our own drives, then our collisions will be occasional, often accidental, sometimes sought, but always with the motivation of satiating our own curiosity, the individual leaning towards completion of the latest mind craze.

But what else still? If we put the family, our own collective, as an entity in its’ own right, with it’s own drives, will, motivations, desires, leanings, needs, hunger and thirst, then to neglect it always for our individual pursuits is to miss out on something, to abandon something deep, important, essential. A collective, a family, needs intention and time. It’s almost as if the individuals involved have to be conscious of this thing that’s more than the sum of the individual parts, on which they depend for their emotional and physical survival.

To feed the soul of the family everyday, with times to honour, connect and maintain that precious thing which is greater than ourselves, is to understand the deep workings of the human soul to be more than the bumbling, leaning, grasping self conscious mind machines that we so often can be, and which we are trained to be from an early and vulnerable age.