Thanks Phatboy.
Yeah, sometimes the people that you meet, that have never attended college, or might not have even graduated high school are the most intelligent.
Another thing that has happened to me recently has really rattled me. I was snowboarding at a local place about 35 minutes away from my house. My friends didn't go, my brother didn't go either. I was sitting down eating lunch inside the "lodge". I sat in a table next to the line for buying food. I watched a guy I have never seen before buy a piece of pizza, a coke, then he approached me. He asked me if I was alone, and if he could have lunch with me.
I said sure, and he sat down, he asked me some questions to start a conversation maybe. He asked me about college, and what I wanted to do. I told him, philosophy, and maybe theology, study of ancients texts. He instantly connected, telling me that he had gone to school for philosophy, graduated Cornell, and 2 other forgotten highly prestigous schools. He told me about an author, Herman Hesse, who I has previously been recommended from a great teacher, Mr. H. He teaches Global Studies at my school. This was strange because he talked about things that I had been stressing out about for so long with me. This was amplified by a similar story that my teacher Mr H. had told me about a "Dweller", a man who resonated a large sound, and could pick up on others' sounds, this dweller said he had stayed in the same place for a long time, and this allowed him to pick up on others' sounds.
I immediately thought of this, and actually questioned the guy I was eating lunch with about it, he barely responded, getting caught in a web of Chinese Philosophy, his past experiences in Desert Storm.
After the long conversation he left, and I rode the ski lift up with him, never saw him again.
After reading "Siddhartha", and "Demian" I realized what effect this dweller was talking to me about.
I wrote down the topics of talk in my journal, and the implications that I could connect with my life were obvious. The messages have stayed with me. But this experience has turned me on to a path that make me have the need to attend a college, and pursue my wishes in education.
The subtlety of nature is far beyond that of sense or of the understanding; so that the specious meditations, speculations, and theories of mankind are but a kind of insanity, only there is no one to stand by and observe it.
-Francis Bacon "Novum Organum"
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