SPONGE

Education is the making and falling of us all. By what we assimilate and absorb – including what we watch, listen to and read – we become. We are sponges.

1. Do we even care?

2. Or do we accept this fact and use it to challenge the way we spend our time, issuing affirmative action over our lives?

Which ‘box’ do we pick from – number 1 or number 2? Whatever, we should know this:

The former, which is the head-in-the-sand approach, backfires on us via our laziness and implicit nature to pick any nature and number of moral ailments that infuse themselves upon us. The latter, however, is taking responsibility for the insight of awareness, complete with the faculty of the commitment, where necessary, to change... to improve.

It’s not only children who are sponges for information. Adults, equally, are influenced very effectively for both good and evil purposes.

‘Sponging’ for Growth

But, now, let’s focus on the positive aspects of ‘sponging’.

“To sponge or not to sponge?”—that is the appropriate question.

As we read, watch and listen—otherwise engaging with our world—we can do so with blinkered thought or with an open mind. We need to know that a mind opened requires focus and energy to not only keep it open—beyond the biases we all have—but to keep it awake to the stimuli being feed in.

Enter the effort of tenacious thinking—the person who is mentally on the ball—for there are many opportunities that go begging because we just didn’t care enough. Some, and indeed many, of these opportunities will never return to us, and certainly not in the form in which they’re now being presented.

It’s up to us in the final analysis. Do we read, watch and listen with the intent of someone who really wants to learn and grow or not? If we’re wise for our future we do.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.