Hmmm, perhaps I can say thank you by paying it forward.
One of the few things I remember from my college days, 40+ years ago, is a concept learned in an Interpersonal Communications course. It describes three ways we view ourselves: 1( The way I see myself 2) The way others see me 3) The view I have of how other people view me.
These three views are concentric circles that overlap in one small area. The area of overlap is the true nature of who I am. That is a valuable concept in itself. But the value of the concept of concentric rings, and where the truth lies, became foundational in my life in a bigger sense.
Two years of college taught me some stuff and got my name on a diploma which indirectly got me my first job. But I felt dissatisfied with my education. I wanted to learn to think critically and analytically so I could make up my own mind about important things.
And so, after a brief time in the working world, I quit my job and enrolled at York University determined to train my mind. In those days, liberal universities like York encouraged and championed independent thinking. I fear that value has been lost.
In my second year at York, I took a literature-based Social Science course taught by Professor Porter. I am not sure what attracted me to the course. But I do know that it was the best decision I ever made.
Professor Porter assigned essays based simply on a few paragraphs from the book we were studying. Think about it. Wonder about it. That is all the direction he would offer. It was frustrating and many of the people in the class never grasped what he was doing.
But I did what Professor Porter asked. I dissected the passage line by line and word by word and, in so doing, discovered untold meaning in it. Professor Porter later remarked that what he was trying to teach us was a method of inquiry – aka developing our intellectual capacity to look beyond the surface and discover the underlying truth.
It was the most valuable lesson of my young life and became part of how I conduct my life. I am finding that skill to be particularly important in the circumstances in which we are currently living.
We are bombarded with information from many sources – particularly the media and social media. Concentric rings of reshaped information circling around the truth and obscuring it in the process. Other people’s version of the truth coloured by their wants and needs and sometimes greed.
If we want to find the grain of truth, we have to be prepared to pick apart the layers surrounding it using our God-given intellectual capacity.
Think of it like the Russian Nesting Dolls at the head of this post. The tiniest doll is the pure truth. The bigger and bigger dolls that swallow up the tiny one are the layers of biased interpretation, and sometimes manipulation, which hide the grain of truth from us.
In retrospect, Professor Porter was one of the most influential people in my life. I wish I could find him so I could thank him. Alas, that will not likely happen. But I can honour what he taught me by paying it forward.
Think about it. Wonder about it. Keeping going until you find the grain of truth. It is more than worth the effort.
~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet
~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .
~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week
Tags: metaphor · method of inquiry · Michael Robert Dyet · nesting dolls · Professor Porter · truth · York UniversityNo Comments.
