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miércoles, 29 de octubre de 2008

Intellectual curiosity

I once read a story about three brothers who washed up on an island in Hawaii. A myth. An old one. I read it when i was a kid, so I probably don't have the story exactly right, but it goes something like this. Three brothers went out fishing and got caught in a storm. They drifted on the ocean for a long time until they washed up on the shore af an uninhabited island. It was a beautiful island with coconuts growing there and tons of fruit on the trees, and a big, high mountain in the middle. The night they got there, a god appeared in their dreams and said, "A little farther down the shore, you will find three big, round boulders. I want each of you to push his boulder as far as he likes. The place you stop pushing your boulder is where you will live. The higher you go, the more of the world you will be able to see from your home. It's entirely up to you how far you want to push your boulder." So the three brothers found three boulders on the shore just as the god had said they would. And they started pushing them along as the god told them to. Now these were very huge, heavy boulders, so rolling them was hard, and pushing them up an incline took an enormous effort. The youngest brother quit first. He said, "Brothers, this place is good enough for me. It's close to the shore, and I can catch fish. It has everything I need to go on living. I don't mind if I can't see that much of the world from here." His two elder brothers pressed on, but when they were midway up the mountain, the second brother quit. He said, "Brother, this place is good enough for me. There is plenty of fruit here. It has everything I need to go on living. I don't mind if I can't see that much of the world from here." The eldest brother continued walking up the mountain. The trail grew increasingly narrow and steep, but he did not quit. He had great powers of perseverance, and he wanted to see as much of the world as he posibly could, so he kept rolling the boulder with all his might. He went on for months, hardly eating or drinking, until he had rolled the boulder to the very peak of the high mountain. There he stopped and surveyed the world. This was the place he would live, where no grass grew, where no birds flew. For water, he could only lick the ice and frost. For food, he could only gnaw on moss. But he had no regrets, becouse now he could look out over the whole world. And so, even today, his great, round boulder is perched on the peak of the mountain on an island in Hawaii. That's how the story goes.
Well guys, as all the stories we got a moral in it. Two,probably. The first one is that people are all different. Even siblings. And the other one is that if you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price. You would say the lives chosen by the two younger brothers make the most sense, and it's true. Nobody wants to go all the way to Hawaii to stay alive licking frost and eating moss. That's for sure. But the eldest brother was curious to see as much of the world as possible, and he couldn't suppress that curiosity, no matter how big the price was he had to pay. And that is what I call intellectual curiosity.

2 comentarios:

PENSADORA dijo...

Not only intellectual but spiritual too.

My english is not as good as yours but I hope you'll understand me.

That's why I love mountains, becouse they put you in your real place on the world and as hard as it's to get to the top peak the more you know how small you are.

Lolíndir Palantír dijo...

that's sure my love ...you went straight to my mind when I wrote this piece.....take care sweet heart