"Education"

I was reading the New York Times and I came across this article titled: The Other Education. The author David Brooks was referring to his second education that was beyond the written academics and involved his emotional quotient.

It all started with his first encounter with Bruce Springsteen's songs. And soon Springsteen became his Guru to this new second education. To quote the author:

...over the next few decades Springsteen would become one of the professors in my second education. In album after album he assigned a new course in my emotional curriculum.

He further explained how this emotional education differed from the regular college education. The regular classroom has its regular teacher covering the required modules and students act on the given material. However, this second education is indirect in its way of entering our minds. Brooks says,

...comes indirectly, seeping through the cracks of the windowpanes, from under the floorboards and through the vents. It’s generally a byproduct of the search for pleasure, and the learning is indirect and unconscious.

His second education began with Springsteen's. His lyrics, the way Springsteen touches on various subject matters, his perspective, etc. Finally Brooks ended saying,

I’m not claiming my second education has been exemplary or advanced. I’m describing it because I have only become aware of it retrospectively, and society pays too much attention to the first education and not enough to the second.

Ain't that true? Society pays so much attention to the number of diplomas awarded then to personality and character of an individual. A classmate of mine has nth number of degrees to his name, is currently doing his MBBS and he hates patient interaction. Actually, he hates anything that requires him to bend down and serve. Why medicine then? I would never know. He has a high IQ, EQ probably lies at negative 1, 083, 098 on a scale of positive 10 till negative infinity.

In fact, we all gather our own emotional faculty — artists, friends, family and teams. Each refines and develops the inner instrument with a million strings.

Find your balance in life with your comfortable emotional corner. As the author mentioned, it can be anything as long as it brings out the different sides of you that test papers set by our professors of multiple credentials have failed to perform.

With the Springsteen vibe in place, here is my favourite number of his. :) :)

- Bruce Springsteen and the E. Street Band - Point Blank -