Intelligent individuals don’t require to flaunt false Fedoras

          Intelligent individuals don’t require to flaunt false Fedoras

 

Real temple of learning exists between and behind the two temples in everyone’s head

 

I vaguely remembered the many statements in The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith and managed to refer the internet to get the two very meaningful sentences from that excellent book:-

“ We lived several years in a state of much happiness, not but that we sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its favours” and “ Providence has thought fit to elude our curiosity, satisfied with granting us motives to consolation”.

Providence makes certain individuals to go through long durations of hardships by depriving or at least delaying access to comforts, happiness, peace etc.

However, certain individuals use those rubbings of harsh providence as sandpaper to polish their character and as whetstone to sharpen their senses and sensitivities and calmly allowing comparisons with the well fated individuals as inspirations rather than intimidations.

One could see and feel beneath some people’s  worldly achievements, there lurk a spark of intelligence and street smartness, not the one gained through academic knowledge acquisition, or something bestowed by virtue of inheritance from a well-known ancestry but something too genuine, heartfelt, unhypocritical, practical, sincere lived experience driven or gained through some highly impactful events or intense emotional jolts of providence.

 

These lived experience driven impacts impart vital life lessons with total intensity and intense totality more than a few hundred texts or books can ever do.

 

We may understand these, if we shed our usual conditionings, unlearn our intellect driven process of learning only through prescriptive dogmas or relying only on empirical science proven authentic reason and logic.

 

By no means the above statement must be misconstrued as underestimating the cardinal values or utilities of those processes with certain caveats not to evaluate or try to perceive everything only through those prisms. Then, they may become prisons of perceptions.

 

Also, there is no denying the fact that these processes are the most preferred and best authentic methods, among the heap of too many pseudo- or sentimental or ethnocentric or religious belief systems-based tools of deciphering truth.

 

However, they are neither the only options nor omniscient or omnipotent nor the be all and end all of human beings’ perception tools or try to fit perceiving everything and everyone to existing templates of normal acceptance based merely on these processes.

 

Instead, if we move beyond or more precisely, stay still in innocent childlike curiosity, wonder and awe through mere observation the manifestation of certain phenomena around us and appreciate them as they are without letting them pass through any of the existing filters, then, only then, we may relish certain nuances and niceties of such unique individuals who are shining examples of human race's real tryst with destiny as also the great warriors who have fought with courage and conviction to overcome adverse circumstances and who are great examples of undaunted human spirit to survive and to set great examples for posterity be it the Florence Nightingales, Madame Curies and millions of unsung heroines in every nook and corner of the world.

 

What made me write this is a recent short video clip of a successful person narrating a particular incidence in her life which was shared in social media [1]

 

These types of harsh providences force the weak and the meek to sulk into self-imposed loneliness and desperation, but they impart to the bold a sort of smartness akin to highly creative instincts or natural talents of gifted souls in all domains of the Atlas of  human activities ranging from tiresome dirty hard work to routines to highly skilful sports or arts or scientific discoveries and so on. In short, they have the knack of grasping the pulse of any problem and get into the essence of the matter.

 

This is because these great individuals do not feel the necessity to smother harsh realities or truths either with too much of diplomatic jargons or contrived explanations or let realities to lurk with uneasiness to sustain or to present a socially acceptable or appreciated ideological Fedoras.

 

There are a host of sickening stereotyped collective social and psychological conditioning based biases which make people think that certain positions deemed to be of intellectual importance is meant to be occupied only by people with some alphabets sprinkled as suffixes indicating various academic credentials or prefixes of some academic titles like Dr, Professor etc even though there are many from this ilk who have been crass idiots when it comes to tackling real life issues or taking holistic decisions [2].

 

Similarly, the world fancies some institutions as great labels ( though there may be some truth in it) and they term them as temples of learning whereas, all over the world, for everyone, there is only one temple of learning and that exists between and behind the two temples in everyone’s head.

 

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UEIyvrVvvA&t=141s

 

[2] This made many raising their ignorant but haughty eyebrows as to how come some popular star from the glamour or tinsel world be given a portfolio of Ministry of HRD which they felt must land up only with those who have fancy academic tags. I have always had an admiration for this woman from the time I knew her as a budding politician, not as an actress [I hardly know anything about her contribution in that domain].