UNDERSTANDING
Understanding is the key to success! I woke up this morning with a pressing feeling, I have been having this feeling for couple of days now; the feeling of writing, I want to write, my fingers are aching to write something. So when I woke up with that feeling again, I realize I have to do something about it before I lose my senses, before I start running around the street shouting ‘I want to write!!!’ Now I’m ready to write, what am I going to write about? While searching for what to write, I noticed something beside me, sorry someone beside me. He is trying hard to practice what he has been taught earlier which he seem to have understood when he was being taught, but right now, he is having problems. When I concentrated my attention on him I realized the cause of his problems: he did not learn by understanding. Rather, he has learnt by cramming (memorizing the processes). When you learn by cramming, you have limited the capacity of your brain. You will only know the processes i.e. you will know that ‘when I get here I will do this, when I get there I will do that, and God save you, if you should forget a line, that is the end, because you will never move forward again, just because you did not understand the reason for what you are doing.Show me a man who does not know the reason for what he is doing and I will show you a fool. I’m not here to condemn or to judge people; I’m only trying to call to wake that part of your reasoning faculty that you have pushed to subconsciousness. Understanding is the knowledge you have about something i.e. to understand, and to understand means to know the meaning why somethings happen, how they happen and why they are important. I simply define understanding as knowing what you are doing! If you don’t know what you are doing, you can be easily confused. Let me now tell you; before you can claim you understand anything in life you have to understand yourself first. Understanding yourself makes you have a solid definition of life; you will know your self-worth, your belief and what you stand for. And if you know all these things, your approach to life issues will be more refined and people will respect you the more.
It is a shame that these days nobody cares about understanding; students and pupils in school don’t care about understanding, they don’t learn to understand rather, they learn to pass their exams. It is not their fault totally; the system in which they pass through has made it so. But I tell you: you can stand for change if you are reading this piece; you can decide to put a stop to this ill-informed trend but it will require a lot of hard work and commitment from you. As a student if you are really going to stop this trend, you will have to go the extra mile, you will have to study extra hard with more time and you will need the determination to change. It might not be easy at start, but I tell you, according to my favorite quote, I heard it in a movie titled ‘Akeelah and the Bee’, it says ‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves: who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous. Actually who are you not to be?’ There is nothing you cannot do. If you tread along the path of understanding, you will soon realize that it is the simplest and the most rewarding step you will ever take.
When you have understanding, you will be the master of your life; you will be in charge of your game. Even when you ask questions, you will ask reasonable question that will build you up and not just questions to remind yourself of what you forgot.
