Recently I started reading some Russian literature, and more precisely Evgeney Onegen and some of the romantic poems by Pushkin. The writing is beautiful and it reads like a charm; I’ve been really enjoying it. However, I remember that when I was in school in Russia, the teachers used to ask us to read a lot of this literature, and better yet memorize a lot of it; I hated it then! I was probably 12 years old and it made absolutely no sense!

Back then, I knew it made no sense to me, and I knew I didn’t want to read or memorize all this stuff, however, the education system didn’t allow me to do otherwise and therefore my grades on literature-related items weren’t that great. Now thought, I read one of the poems and I remembered it. Why ? Because now it has relevance and meaning – I don’t have to try hard to remember it.

Think about it this way, if you have a choice to turn left or to turn right while driving, but the object of your interest is to the right, chances are you don’t need to convince yourself that going that way is the right choice. Exactly the same it is with my mind – I now like this poem and I don’t have to think too hard in order to recall the word. The crude English translation of the poem I read is below.

I loved you: love is, perhaps,
In my soul is not extinguished;
But let it not bother you anymore;
I do not want to cause you any sorrow.
I loved you silently, hopelessly,
Modesty and jealousy was stressed;
I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,
As I wish God give you another love.

~Alexandr Pushkin

(russian version of the poem)

Anyways, my messed up mind is not the core of my thinking here. What amuses me even more is that however illogical and unproductive memorizing Pushkin was, nobody did anything about it! Some parents somewhere needed to get up and ask “why!”, some teacher needed to say “why not something else…”, but nobody did. I mean, I could understand the persistence if all the graduates of that school came out the smartest people on Earth, but that’s not nearly the case. Then why is that nobody ever questioned whether there was a better? What is it about people that stops us from asking “Why?” and taking an approach that’s not the same as others think it should be?

p.s. In all fairness, there are people out there who take innovative approaches to learning and living, but they are dime a dozen.