I feel obligated to continue the thread of my previous post what old skin am shedding?
In the interval between the two posts, one thing that kept coming to my mind was the education that my parents and the generations before them did not have. What does that mean to me – a burden, a responsibility, or a path? Perhaps all three at once. A burden can be a responsibility and a direction forward as well.
My ancestors were pushed into the mountain to escape the persecution of Abul-Rahman Khan in the late 18th century who massacred 63% of Hazara people in Afghanistan. For many decades the mountain protected them at the same time it kept them in isolation from the rest of the world. Their world narrowed down to gray mountains with giant rocks clung to the mountains. A blue sky that only changed color in winter bringing them snow gift. There’s a saying in the village, “We don’t wish for a rain of gold but for snow.” Their task of the day was to carve the mountains and flatten them for crops of a four-month winter.
Until my father ventured beyond the mountain range, he brought with him the knowledge of knowledge. He took great humiliation to be at the other end, unable to obtain or practice it. Politicians who rose to power, doctors who ran hospitals, and engineers who built the city infrastructure were the examples he used to encourage me to go to school. A path he wanted me to follow to be a functional entity in the world that was changing for us – a world that was getting bigger. Whenever I close my eyes I see the world in its entirety from Island to Japan, from Peru to New Zealand. And I have walked almost one-tenth of it on a decade-long journey.
So it is a path and a responsibility to set the ground for the next generations to come. That would have been fine on its own if I were an eighteen-year-old student to push me through university education. But my life in Indonesia has built a strong sense of self within me where almost everything I perceive from the world filters through certain lenses that are distinct to me. A change of course for the next generations misses my personal belief.
What does knowledge mean to me on a personal level?
I have come to believe knowledge, as an agent of freedom. Freedom that I can control. It came to me behind the detention wall. Late in the evening, I often took a walk in the courtyard reflecting on my day. Articles I had read, new English words and syntax I had learned, I could feel how they climbed the barbed wire that surrounded me – taking me to a new space I hadn’t been – giving me a new capability I didn’t have. And I felt free however fleeing it was.
Now that I am not bounded by such a physical constraint I need to find a new connection with knowledge—a new form of prison to liberate myself. I think we are all in one or another form of prison, if not physically, it’s mentally, or spiritually. For me it is the lack of progress and adventure I feel suffocated by. And I believe knowledge is the best transcendent tool for progress and adventure. I wonder what knowledge means to you? How is your life in the absence of it?
Now that I have clarified my goals for my university education, the next question is what does it take to succeed in it? A question I would like to continue in my next post.
Thanks to those who read, liked, and commented on my previous post. It feels like you are walking with me.
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I love what you write here about freedom, Hussain. This image of words climbing the walls... Beautiful. I love reading your writing. ✨
I am enjoying your insights Hussain. We can indeed imprison or chain ourselves by limiting our ideas or seeking opinions and confirmations of our existing thoughts or beliefs only in echo chambers with like-minded persons.
While having recently attained the lofty title of senior citizen, I long ago realised that my earlier formal education was in reality a method of showing me how to learn. I have contined striving to learn something new every day since.
The doors are there for the opening.