Japan:  Tokyo for the culture, Osaka for the food, the countryside for the experience.

I suppose I am playing the middle ground here. As far as age goes, I find the quarter-life an odd place: too old to be truly young, to have ideas accepted or dismissed upon the basis of youth, freshness, and all the other words used to divide up our society, yet too young for the passing of years to lend the weight of experience to my words. Both perspectives are, of course, nonsense. There is meaninglessness to be found in the old and the young, and the quarter-lifers, and there is rare bits of wisdom to be found in all three.

I have never particularly understood the concept of a sheltered life. Certainly, some lives are easier than others, a few have luxuries beyond what would be credited but a few hundred years past, and others suffering beyond still what the human mind can compass. No, its not a failure to understand inequity, rather it lies in the connotations of the word ‘sheltered’ itself; to be insulated and protected, as well as cut off, from the world and its wounds. Humanity it is said, is very bad at determining what would make it happy, to that I would add we excel at finding what makes us miserable. Even if, laying aside family and culture, who even with the most benign of intents rarely refrain from adding to our miseries, one could be absolutely sequestered from the rest of the world, we still have our minds, swarms of questions and doubts that they are, to keep contentment at bay. People may parrot, but they never accept, our brains will not let us. Those who believe in Deity must wrestle with their beliefs every bit as much as people who refute the same.

To that end, I have come to a point quite similar to David’s, at least insofar as I understand it: what does it matter if Deity exists or not? Are human actions, either benign or malignant, dependent on the existence of Deity, or are humans in and of themselves capable of actions some would call divine or infernal? Or is it even so cut and dry? Is the police officer who arrests the criminal saintly for protecting the neighborhood or infernal for destroying a family? Religion, I suppose, has its place. Some people need a reason to be outward centric or else resort to a life of self gratification, often in this overcrowded world to the detriment of others and religions have their place in curtailing this behavior. But this is religion not Deity, it is worship, or fear, the dividing line being as thin as that between angelic and demonic, that moderates peoples behavior. So in the end what does it matter about deity? Send your plastic prayers each the same pressed into molds carved by humans, in Deity’s name perhaps, but certainly carved by people, or send nothing and fight to come to terms with the metaphysical vacuum into which you place yourself. Perhaps one alternative is better, perhaps neither, but both are certainly irrelevant. What is, is, and consists of, for as long as we live, the weaving tapestry made by our response to others actions, and others reaction to ours. After is, in the end, after.

Teaching is, perhaps, much the same. We have our classrooms for a fixed period of time, with no control over the circumstances that brought us, and others, into the room, and none over how we will in time part it, nor over where we all will wind up. But more importantly classrooms are about interactions: the teacher interacts with the students, the students with each other, and the students with the teacher. All of this interplay is essential. The teacher must impart knowledge to the students, but that is not so simple a task. Data delivered by rote is not teaching, for that leaves the students to pick up what information they can. Learning, at least a little, has occurred, but certainly not teaching. Teaching necessitates a connection, a derived similarity between teacher and pupils, to act as a framework to graft knowledge onto in a way the students can relate. In order to do that, the teacher must understand the student’s perspective, and because each worldview is unique, the teacher must study their students carefully to create a cohesive joint paradigm. Therefore, it is not merely coincidental but essential that teachers are taught by their students. At least the effective ones. And because each person holds a grain of wisdom unique to themselves, those truly great teachers who reach, and are reached by countless students, through each pupil, each class, each year that they teach, these teachers are the ones who truly become wise.