Words Worth

Philosophy is a heady matter and recently being in a group of highly intelligent, well-educated and widely experienced people, I found my mundane mind somewhat overwhelmed. But it was also stimulated along with overjoy-ment to be listening to something it had to reach for and strain to understand. What else is a lonely, hungry mind for? We follow a book by an author who spends his life writing and exploring his subject. It is deep and difficult. It categorizes all that Man has been and is and could be. It goes where I have never been and it astounds me. At times it humbles me to wonder what I am doing in such a pool of academics. But when I get a grip on those negative thoughts, I know that this stretching of the mind, without having to believe everything I am learning about, is okay. It's like the pain in your side when you run too far and too fast but are hyped by the  pheromones that tell you it was a good thing for you. The folk sitting about the circle of those listening to a kindly and patient and very sincere professor who gains not a cent from what he is doing other than the satisfaction of presenting to his followers what he believes in so strongly, and hoping it makes our lives as rich as his, intellectually. There were times when I feel drowned in the terminology and science and spiritualism of it all, but like pretty poison, I can't stop partaking. Yes, among the experienced people in the mixture, there are certainly those who are in love with their grasp of the subject and make to enlighten the rest, but there are also those of us, who don't swallow the entire lecture in one gulp, but rather,  nibble around the edges to find something to take away that will lend benefit to our own lives. I suppose that's what being educated really is. It's not spouting the memorization of the creations of others, but absorbing them, without words having to be strewn, to fit our every-day personal needs. And as all education, it doesn't end after institution learning, it continues, and this is simply another opportunity to jump on that continuum.