This is a deeper dig into the list that I had created for my article titled: Do Something Every Day. https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2020/11/living-do-something-everyday.html
Ever since I was young, my parents and my culture had
instilled a sense of respect for learning. Even though the dominant pedagogical
philosophy in Taiwan was of the cram and memorize in school, I learned more by
asking Why? What if? And How? questions. In fact, when my family moved
to Honduras, one of the new family friends there would shake his head at how
often Why? came out of my mouth.
It was a natural habit that follows me today, although the persistent
question asking has been tempered by circumspection and patience.
The joy of learning and the pride in knowing is a part of my
genetics, it is my raison d’etre. I realized this fact about myself late
in life, much after I had set my life on a path which was expected of me: to
chase after the brass ring. Our society does
not hold the idea of knowledge for the sake of knowledge in high regard. My
pursuit of broad knowledge is considered by society as living as a jack of
all trades but master of none, which is considered a pejorative in our
society because of society’s need for
its workers to specialize and concentrate on narrow bailiwicks and serve as
replaceable cogs in the production machine supersedes society’s desire to have people
who knew knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
I have instead started telling people that I am a polymath
in training because I felt I needed to disguise my joy in pursuing my
catholic span of interests. Saying that you are training to become a polymath
is slightly more respectable than being a jack of all trades; at the least the
term polymath will send people off to Google before they can denigrate
the idea. As I became fascinated with the idea of the polymath, I have come to
appreciate the implications of being a polymath. There is even a book espousing
the many merits of a polymath
It may have started out as a snarky retort, but this has
become my purpose in life and my destiny: to know something about everything
and everything about something.
In the ever-pragmatic reality in which we exist, the societal
norm is to treat knowledge as salable commodities. This attitude narrowly
define knowledge as either being immediately
applicable or as the basis for creating new knowledge from the foundation of
the old knowledge. All to advance human progress. This was especially true in
my chosen profession of engineering. We were judged as either as applied,
real-world engineers; or as theoretical and impractical researchers.
Teaching is an obvious third option, but it is held as a very
non-glamourous, non-celebrated third option. Society views teaching as
necessary but non-value-added proposition for passing on the knowledge to the
future workforce. Even though many researchers inhabit the hallowed hall of
academia, their worth is determined narrowly by their originality and ability
to break new grounds in their niche subjects.
The teaching part of their profession has rarely been celebrated as a
standalone achievement, only as a companion, a complementary function that is
secondary to the innovation and creative endeavors of the researcher. There
have been good, if not great teachers amongst the great innovators, but the
brilliance of their pedagogical prowess are seen merely as a bonus rather than
as a primary endeavor.
As I worked my way through the usual career of an engineer
with a doctorate, I found myself drawn to the teaching function as I got older.
My gift, I realized, was not in applying the knowledge, or creating new
knowledge; instead, my gift was in my ability to communicate knowledge to others.
As I look back at my career as an engineer, I was never happier than when I was
doing research, to learn, and then to teach. I did get a thrill while applying my knowledge,
at witnessing a design evolve into a product, or investigating the unexplored
territories of engineering, creating something new and heretofore unknown; it
is just that the thrill of connecting with another human while sparking their
minds gave me bigger and more thrilling thrills.
I decided to make the learning something new every day and
teaching someone something every day the central tenets in my daily list of
habits. Habits that I hope to internalize. Habits that will be my wu-wei behavior: doing without
knowing, action without thought, impulse rather than intent. Make learning and
teaching a deeply integrated part of my being. So it is that I train myself to
do it everyday.
Works Cited
Ahmed, Waqas. The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of
Human Versatility. New York City: John Wiley, 2019.
Epstein, David. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in
a Specialized World. New York: Riverhead Books, 2019.
