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Seriously joking, right?

[ 2 minute read ]

       'I have come to learn!'

       'Oh, alright then,' the old man in the deck-chair replied, knocking out his pipe. 'What is it you want to know?' His deeply lined face grew older as he pondered.

       'I don't know. Stuff!'

       'Do you hear that, Bonny? He wants to know stuff.' The donkey beside him looked balefully back at him. 'Have you come far, learner?' The old man asked the hesitant man. 'Are you a seeker?'

       'Not really. I just fancied learning something and thought I would show up. I borrowed the money.'

       'And?'

       'I think there are people more advanced than I in the class.'

       'And so you have not made yourself known, and because you think the money is not yours, since you borrowed it, you have not lost it?'

       'Well, yes.'

       'Embarrassed!'

The old man in the deck-chair refilled his pipe and tamped the tobacco down. He shrewdly looked at Bonny, the donkey, which winked at him and thought itself more clever than the man. The old man lit his pipe and nodded his agreement. 'Another one', he mouthed. Bonny raised and lowered her head twice.

***

There are two types of people. There are a lot more really but today there are only two. There is the person who makes the most out of their day. 'Carpe Diem' (seize the day) and there is the person who expects others to make the day for them. 'absens haeres non erit.' The latter Latin phrase means 'he who is absent will not inherit'. As far as I understand things, if someone does not bring their head to the game, the game will play without them, and that head-less person can never gain anything.

       The old man decided to speak Latin, 'spectator!' and strangely he was understood. The slumped-shouldered man before him flinched. 'You have paid to learn and yet you remain a spectator.' The old man deliberately said to Bonny the donkey. Bonny looked at the crestfallen man, who nervously looked back. He had yet to come to terms with self-actualising, the highest personal aspirational human need in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs after basic needs are met.

       Bonny coughed, 'Ego!' but added 'Haw' to make it seem natural. She drew her lips back into a macabre yellow-toothed grin.

       'I am coming to that!' the old man said irascibly. 'Don't jump the gun.' He boosted himself up from his deck-chair, reached over to the side and down to the sand on the beach and picked up the only book there; next to a red plastic bucket and spade. The book had no title or author's name but the fly-leaf inside said, 'Simply Psychology, and it had https://www.simplypsychology.org/self-actualization.html underneath the words. It fell open at 'Potential' and he read aloud, 'Self-actualization is a concept in psychology that refers to the process of fulfilling one's true potential, becoming the best version of oneself, and achieving personal growth, meaning, and fulfillment in various aspects of life.' All the rest of the pages were blank. They always were. He put the book back down and a few grains of sand jumped onto it. It didn't matter. He was safe in the knowledge that the words would rearrange themselves, with sometimes more and sometimes less words, and some of the words would be changed into other words.

       'Were you seeking validation, approbation, praise and positive clamouring for your skill?'

       'No,'

       Bonny shook her huge head and looked directly at the man. Facing the scrutiny of a dumb animal the man cracked, 'Yes! yes, yes!'

       'Now you realise that you have been coasting and not applying yourself.'

       'Yes.'

       'All that glistens is not gold.' said Bonny finally fed up with being silent.

       'If vicarious learning was your goal then you have it.' said the old man, nodding. 'If you really want to learn, you have to work at it.' And following on from Bonny's careless outburst, 'Diamonds do not come out of the ground already cut and polished.'

       Bonny coughed again. 'Ego!' and unconvincingly added 'Haw.'

       'Flat, I should say.' observed the old man, 'But the realisation is not yet there because there is too much of an echo.' He puffed on his pipe and shut his eyes and then lifted one eye-lid to see if the follower had gone. He noticed the tide was coming in.

It is strange how an echo seems so real and provides comfort, even though it is disembodied and from the past.