As a father, I’ve found that my daughter has some of the most profound statements and insights. With that, I’ve taken to using our times driving in the car to open up dialogues and inquiry into what she thinks and feels. Sometimes it’s non-sensical whims. Other times, it’s stuff that philosophers alike have baffled over for centuries.
The other day, I asked my daughter “Why are we here, alive, on this planet?”
Her answer?
“To learn.”
I, of course, wanting to probe deeper, followed up with the question “To learn what, Lily?”
Her answer?
“Yes.”
I won’t go into tangents on this – however, it made me pause. So often I find myself in states of sheer acceptance of moments of life, and others granular dissection of facts and truths. In this case, I was attempting to dig for some fact…and what she presented was a paradox in an answer. We are here to learn, and with that, the very act of being and exploring “learning” – we are learning what we need to learn.
The ironic element (for me, today) – is that we are learning that we actually have access to more information than we could ever learn, and thus we are learning that we don’t need to know it all, for it’s already all known. In fact, we are learning many things we need to “unlearn” in order to be. That we need to “shed” paradigms, perspectives, and elements we held onto, and that in learning that very kernel of truth, we learn we already were, and are everything. Whole and complete. What a paradox, for in that new moment, a more “completeness” appears. Much akin to expanding outward from and inside of, a fractal. The more we transgress through the fringe of that fractal, the larger the meta-picture appears, all but connected, and completed parts of itself.
I’m still marveling in her simple reply to “To learn what” was “yes,” almost as if she in her 5yr old physical form had already fully understood all there was to know and understand.
