A protégé of the time...

A protégé of the time once asked me:

"How is it, that you know, everything?"

I must have smiled at her naivete, but her question was beautiful. Seeing my silent response she corrected:

"I mean, how do you know all that you know?"

I realise there's more indicated, by this, than the simple question. I think we learn by the ability to view the being of one who has something within them that we want.

"Just by learning something new, everyday," I responded. "In other words, just keep on doing what you are doing."

I'd observed her for several months, always toiling, and always reading. This impressed me, because she was unlike others I'd seen through the years, who seemed to rely more on a self confidence that their use of assertive voice intonation, and a certainty that their charges could always be fooled into thinking they knew less than their betters, would see them through any threat of possible exposure.

Real achievements can never be faked. They're investments that don't evaporate with time. Just as a body that has been worked on to its sinews, day after day, so a mouth that speaks forth an exercised soul can't be cosmetically manufactured for the masses' consumption.

Just as the reactionary appetites of the YouTube generation for self-indulgent, trite and trivial content may today frustrate the comparatively turgid and elitist perspectives of the older generation, one day they'll return to the inevitable. Learning people, who value depth, want answers to the questions of their hearts.

To teach somebody something is a skill. However, to be one from whom another may derive their own sense of efficacy & purpose to transform, takes daily discipline, sacrifice & endurance.

It is the person from whom another learns to be.