Quantum, sumus, scimus. . . you are what you know. . .

Sometime in my history,  someone touched my life with their example and I learned to love books.  It was in reading that I became aware that the Talmud taught that the only reason for Being was learning.  Learning became the end in itself.  Not to prove anything, but to improve life.  To answer my own eternal why.  To take the log out of my eye I could then venture to help take the splinter out of the Others’ eye.

With the continuing events of the previous weeks escaping our abilities to harness our emotions,  questions need to be asked.  If there are no questions concerning our behaviors, then events are repeated with no progress, even minutely.  And the first question must be directed toward ourselves.  Since attitudes are contagious,  our first question should be how do I contribute to what happens?

During a fearful time a young man said to me,  I know how I am supposed to think and feel and I will continue to try, but right now I am scared.  I told him with that statement, he was close to the kingdom.  Enough times told, even the self begins to change its habits, to match the words the mouth spills.  Lessons are called lessons because the word suggests that a morsel of knowledge is to be found, something not known to the individual.  If the knowledge was truly part of our fabric,  it would be a known and not something to be learned.

We ask ourselves the question,  what have we learned?  And if it is learned, if dailyness suggests that we have integrated knowledge, or integrated a once unknown,  then we have learned something.  That something.  If only the one something.  If it is in the head, learned only by rote,  and our lives do not proclaim it, then it is not knowledge, it is still an unknown.

It is by example that we teach.  Example is still the best teacher.  What do our daily actions announce about us?  Are we sending crossed signals?  Perhaps we need to take time and do some deep thinking.  To see what messages we send out as we approach an Other.   Body language speaks our intention before our words do, so what are we saying?

We must be the good example.