The Cycle of Learning and Sharing: Why Be a Caterpillar When You Can be a Butterfly? – My First V-blog (Prelude) Episode 3

I love to learn; I love finding something new to learn; more so, I love to share what I’ve learned.

In my upcoming video blog, I talk about one memorable childhood moment I had with my dad.  I thought I only had one.  But I was wrong.  There are more.

We bred butterflies, inside a glass container.  A container of a pair of Japanese dolls – one of my parents’ wedding gifts.  Once in a while, my dad would bring home a caterpillar found at the rooftop of the cinema he worked at.  And we would see how a caterpillar turned into a pupa, and finally a beautiful butterfly.  My sister and I would take turn to carry this divine being and see how its wings grew, dried and hardened, and it would attempt to fly away.  Initially reluctant to leave our hands, we would see this pretty butterfly that not too long ago was a tiny caterpillar took one brave leap of faith, carried by the wind, out from our 7th storey apartment, and disappeared right in front of our eyes.  Where did it go?  My sister and I would ask our dad, ask each other, ask ourselves.

Where did it go?

If I could travel back in time, I would have imagined our little baby butterfly grows up, turns into eggs that hatch into millions of fresh green plump caterpillars, and time stops.  All of a sudden, when time resumes, these beings magically transform into millions of butterflies.  And the cycle continues.

Articles say that caterpillars are like eating machines.  They eat and eat and that hunger, that relentless primal hunger reminds me of how our brains work when we are small.  Our brains like sponges that soak up everything around us.  We absorb knowledge, stimulated by all that is new.  We read, we listen, we watch.

We learn as the caterpillars eat.

How many of you stop right there?  You read a book, you return it to the bookshelf.  You take an exam, you move on.  How much do you get out of this reading, listening, and watching?

I cannot recall when I have started to obsess about internalizing what I learned and to find someone to share the newly acquired knowledge or idea with.  It is exhilarating.  In sharing I force myself to question what I’ve absorbed.  While sharing opens my eyes to how other may apply the knowledge.  And I think, the learning process is as simple as step one, two, three: absorb, internalize, and share.  For that two extra steps, just a little bit of extra effort, I get much more than what I used to.

That vision of a flying butterfly turning into eggs that in turn transform into millions of butterfly prompts me to imagine that learning is a cycle on its own.  We learn (i.e. absorb, internalize, and share), we experience, and we re-learn.  One wise man once told me that experience is the opposite of examination; we take the test before the lesson.

So true.

As I write this blog entry, using my wireless phone, I can’t help but to be taken back to the days when I was with my family in Hong Kong, looking at the butterfly took flight.  So brave it was; so happy we were; so beautiful the nature.

Next time when you learn something new, stop for a moment and ask yourself one question: why be a caterpillar when you can be a butterfly?

Notes: (1) Some of you were curious if I created or drew the recent black-and-white pictures by myself.  Yes I did and I enjoy doing that.  (2) This entry was written entirely using my wireless phone while waiting for Cynthia to finish her work.  Hence the different writing style.  (3) Happy Father’s Day.

My 1st v-Blog Mini-Series:

• Episode 1: A New, Shall I Say, Mini-Series and I’m Still Not Sure About It [Jun 8]
• Episode 2: The Coincidental Encounters and the Incidental Chain of Events That Leads to This [Jun 11]
• Episode 3: The Cycle of Learning and Sharing: Why Be a Caterpillar When You Can be a Butterfly? [Jun 15]
• Episode 4: Of Dr. Nanorobot, Human Power Plant, Chip Implant, Eyeset, and More [Jun 25]
• Episode 5: Storyboarding at 24 Frames per Second [Jul 9]
• Episode 6: Stripping My Own Song into Just Four Lines and an Orange Lit Valve That Glows Within [Jul 23]
• Episode 7: Little Mr. Sunshine: A Blog Is Not a Book Is Not a Movie [Jul 29]
• Episode 8: My First v-Blog: A History of Chips (That Matters to Me) [Jul 31]