How Does Learning Illuminate Our World Like a Scuba Lamp?

[coberst]

Learning is ‘Scuba with a Lamp’

I moved to Dallas in 1980 and decided to learn scuba diving. I took a YMCA scuba class and after completing the class joined, with many fellow members of my class, a dive club sponsored by the Y. We shortly thereafter took a one week dive trip to Mexico.

It was a marvelous experience.

We arrived at our destination in late afternoon and the group decided to immediately go on a night dive. My first dive is a night dive! Needless to say I was anxious about the whole matter. My first dive proved to be a marvelous experience. I entered into a world that was fantastically delightful.

All of our dives after that first one were day dives. I discovered that the night dive, with a lamp, presented a magnificent fantastic world of living color whereas my day dives, without a lamp, presented a magnificent world of living shades of gray. Without a source of light the living color became living shades of gray because the water filtered out the sunlight’s colors.

I create the linguistic metaphor ‘learning is scuba with a lamp’ to accentuate the fact that the more we learn about our self and our world the more nuanced and delightful our experience of our self and the world becomes. Our schools and colleges teach us a world of shades of gray so that we can function in a culture of production and consumption. If we want to perceive the magnificence of our environment in depth we must become self-learners after our school daze are over.

 

[robertm]

the more we learn about our self and our world the more nuanced and delightful our experience of our self and the world becomes.

I hardily second this measure!

I quite like your analogy coberst, makes me want to read and go night diving in the same breath. Well done.

 

[HallsofIvy]

"Heartily" not "Hardily". I first read it as "hardlY" which meant you were disagreeing!