As I young child, I watched the Cosmos series presented by Carl Sagan. In many ways, he was instrumental in my development as a martial artist but I wouldn’t realize that until decades later.
I remember being glued to the screen, amazed at the things he showed and explained. He showed just how big a place the universe actually is and how infinitely small people are. We’re only here for a minuscule dot of time in the eternity that came before and will come after us. I remember being terrified by this thought as I lay in my bed trying to sleep and feel a gut wrenching fear at the thought of my own death. It took me decades to make peace with that, so to say that Mr. Sagan had an impact on me is putting it mildly.
I would watch an episode of Cosmos and be fascinated by the things he talked about. Then I would go to the library and look them up, reading as much as possible about that subject before moving on to the next one. When I couldn’t get to the library, I’d read in the 5-volume encyclopedia we had at home (remember, there was no internet or Wikipedia back then.) and look up even more things. But that wasn’t enough. Eventually, I just started reading page one of volume one and kept going until I finished the last page of volume five. And then start over. a few more times. Finally, I started reading in the big dictionaries we had at home. I’m sure my mother must have been worried about that.
In hindsight, Mr. Sagan’s TV show gave me a thirst for knowledge that I have been unable to quench. After more than four decades, I still can’t help myself but be interested in, well, pretty much everything. As a result, I still read a lot and thoroughly enjoy talking to experts in their field, regardless of which field that is. The downside of this personality trait is that it breeds arrogance because you start thinking you know so much more than other people so you must be better than them, right? You’re not really, but it takes running your head into the wall a few times before that sinks in.
I’ve had my share of those moments (I wrote about that here) and it took me perhaps longer than it should have because I’m a stubborn bastard but I eventually got the point: I’ll never know as much as I’ll want to know and I’ll never be as good as some people are.
And that’s OK, it’s the way of things and the sooner you accept that, the better your life becomes. [Read more…]