Which is ironic really since so many people I know who have gone to school are NOT well rounded. To many, Africa is a country, Brazil is a jungle. Three levels of government in Canada? Eh? What three? Climate change? Just some activists stirring the pot. Public schooling? Always been around.
'Well-roundedness' is overrated. Why would anyone want to hang with a well round person? I mean, I'm not saying that every conversation I have with a person should fire my brain into frenzy of excitement and take me to new heights of awesomeness-but seriously when we dialogue with people knowledgeable about a subject and who are excited about it-isn't that a lot more rewarding than talking to a person who knows a smattering of this, and a titch about that little about everything but nothing in depth? Borrrring.
When you dig deep to understand what well roundedness actually means- "having experience and interest in many subjects"- it is obvious that well roundedness is a myth for the average person who cares more about his or her latest soap or hockey game.
There are people who know a little about everything, people who know a lot about everything, and people who know a lot about one or two things.
As far as I can tell, the so called 'well-rounded people'- the ones who know a bit about everything, are actually the least interesting to speak and interact with.
The ever inspiring Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden,
I learned this, at least, by my experiment:that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.
........It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so. As if that were important, and there were not enough to understand you without them. As if Nature could support but one order of understandings, could not sustain birds as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping things... as if there were safety in stupidity alone...
Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring....
Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.
Your thoughts?
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