How Water Reflects the Truth About Learning

Drown your Expectations

Expectations create a distracted mind and divert one's focus from the real object of learning. One that's burdened with expectations will constantly compare his present learning experience to his vision of what the process of learning should look like. Clear water always reflects the truth, which is why one can see reflections of the surrounding area on the surface of a body of water.

Nature and Artist

Water can draw perfect landscapes and portraits as evident by your reflections. I recently visited Luray caverns in Virginia; the most memorable part was the "dream lake" or the part where a clear pond of water displayed a perfect reflection of the cavern ceiling. The viewer cannot see the ceiling directly, but the water captured its beauty and enhanced it. 

In contrast to the beauty of reflections on water, a novice artist cannot capture a landscape as accurately as a body of water because what he draws reflects his own understanding of the hills, trees, and horizon instead of what is actually there. Drawing says more about one's perception of the world than about his dexterity. The new artist's drawings don't look like reality even if he tries to copy it because he'll draw what he thinks is a tree, namely, a wooden base with leaves and branches protruding from it. However, an image of a tree actually is a series of intersecting lines and colors. When an artist wants to depict a bird instead of a tree, he only has to change how those lines and colors spatially relate to each other. A body of water can perfectly draw its surrounding because it doesnt create its own perception but rather depicts things as they are.

One can learn faster if he lets go of his preconceived perceptions of a subject and observes the object of learning as is. A common piece of advice to learners is to adopt a beginner's mindset, which is essentially the same thing as subverting one's expectations about the subject in question.