The wisdom to recognize the own ignorance - Parables to teach values
Parables and stories
|
There is an old story of a philosopher of ancient China, who enjoyed the favor of the emperor. He was a very humble man, and when asked something he didn't know, responded immediately: "I don't know".
On one occasion, someone who could not understand their continuous confessions of ignorance, he said:
- But, you do not pay the emperor by what you know?
-Yes, of course - replied the patient humility - philosopher. If I pay for what I don't know, they do not reach the riches of the Empire and the world.
"I only know that I know nothing," said Socrates. The true Sage is very aware of their ignorance, as the true Holy is well aware of its flaws and weaknesses. Who knows little often go flaunting their knowledge and need to display their diplomas and titles which intended to clothe you and cover your ignorance and insecurity. The key to wisdom is recognize the ignorance and always desires to learn to confront the unknown, search, investigate, wanting to know more... It is genuine educator not one who knows a lot or has a number of titles and postgraduate degrees, but one who is able to awaken the curiosity of students and causes them hunger to learn, discover, grow, live to the fullest. Not communicates them both their knowledge, but their desires and skills so they can acquire them. Adventure with his students the everyday learning, it becomes your living room in a workshop, a laboratory, a place of meeting and coexistence, of construction of new knowledge and values, search. All this is only possible if the educator wants to learn, he is a lover of life and teaching, it is committed to its continuous formation and growth, to thus help the growth of their students:
No me instruyas, lives next to me; your failure is that I be identical to ti.
Do not you realize
that you wanted to fight
ignorance
with instruction,
and instruction
the claim is
of ignorance
because it destroys
creativity?
I impose what you know, if I want to why I learn the unknown?
and its source in my own discovery?
The world of your truth is my tragedy; your wisdom, my denial; your conquest, my absence; your doing, my destruction.
(Humberto Maturana).
* * *
-What is your favorite mountain? -asked that famous Mountaineer. -Which do not have climbed - responded. -How is that?
-Yes, it is that compels me to keep me in shape, exercise without rest, get my hopes. It prevents my life becomes a routine and a mere remembering old glories.
True wisdom is also humble, recognizes its smallness, and only thus can zoom in on the mystery. This is what taught him a child playing on the beach to the great sage Augustine:
* * *
One afternoon, Augustine walked the blond beaches of Hippo, agitated by the desire to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity. "How it was possible that God were one and three people at the same time?". His head was burning ideas and questions, and had no eyes to see the sea or ears to listen to the gentle waves that stretched his kisses to the tip of his sandals. Suddenly, he saw that a child was running with a sea shell full of water and threw it in a pocito which had made in the sand with his own hands. The Sage stopped to watch the child. He had black, curly hair, swarming happy in water, filled his shell and was excited to throw in the pocito, that it filled very slowly, because the sand sucked the water.
St. Augustine came to the child when he was throwing water on the
well.
What are you doing, small?
-I'm throwing all the water of the sea in this gap.
- But that's impossible--jumped Agustin wise with a tender and condescending smile. The sea is very large, measuring kilometers and kilometers and is also very deep. How do you think you're going to get one so large in a so small pocito thing?
-That's true - told him the baby facing you with Picardy-, but smaller is your head and you want to put in it a God who is infinite.
Translated for educational purposes.