thinking, that's all

sometimes, just as i'm leaving awake and before i enter sleep, i have these thoughts. i don't know where they come from and i'm still not sure which side of consciousness they live in. i'm not dreaming, that's sure enough. yet i'm not awake enough to realize where this new stream of thought begins to flow, i'm only able to follow it once it emerges. occasionally i'm lucky enough to remember...

last night i had a thought.

i entered "school" in grade 4, but home was my first classroom. year after year i followed lessons, memorized facts, thrived on information. and after high school, i made the expected (and desired) choice and went to college. fast forward through four more years of heightened learning with a slightly larger, more eclectic group of peers. i could finally learn what i wanted, where i wanted. education was a choice and i greedily accepted it. love of learning + fear of the unknown = post-secondary education. a logical decision.

only, after graduation came the brevity of it all. less than a quarter of my life spent in an uncomfortable desk chair, inside white-walled rooms with bright projectors and an ensemble of ragamuffin professors. and then, the world.

and i realized underneath the facts and stats, the dates and theories, i'd really been taught to learn. imperceivable guidelines had been offered, even forced, and i accepted these limitations without hesitation. structure? yes, please. rules? even better. i entered into a tested, nearly fool-proof way of how to live life. in return, i was given safety, predictability, answers. like i said, i love learning.

but what do i do when the learning runs out?
what i should have been doing all along.
experiencing.

i was taught how to think at the expense of not thinking for myself.

so maybe it doesn't really make sense to you. i have trouble understanding it myself. who can expect thoughts after midnight to maintain any level of coherence? but just think about it for a moment.

does our learning shape our experiences, or do our experiences shape what we learn?