LITTLE WORLD, BIG WORLD
One day, back in high school, some friends and I ended up spending an unexpected break in the school library on the building’s top floor. We were having a heated discussion about some major item in the news, when the door suddenly opened. In the doorway stood one of our teachers. She looked stunned.
“I was surprised to hear voices coming from in here,” she said. “And then I heard what you girls were talking about. Listening to the way you were analyzing world events, I thought to myself, ‘This must be a group of twelfth graders, for sure.’ And now, I come in and see that you’re only in ninth grade!” She was utterly shocked to find such young girls so cognizant of what was going on in the world. And so interested in discussing it.
Truth be told, the main reason we were so up-to-date on current events was because one of our group had a family which regularly discussed such topics at home, and she often shared her knowledge and opinions with us. Still, it can’t be denied that those long-ago ninth graders had open, curious minds, along with a passion for arguing and dissecting important issues of the times. All of which came as an unexpected revelation to our teacher.
Coming at it from a grown-up perspective now, I can see why she was so surprised. Young people do tend to get caught up in the endlessly fascinating details of their own insular, though occasionally quite dramatic, worlds. The minutiae of their friendships, school life, and wardrobes fill the top slots of their attention pyramid, leaving earth-shattering world events trailing far behind.
This tendency to block out the big world in favor of our individual small ones is not confined to childhood or adolescence. Unfortunately, it often lingers well into adulthood. And it’s a problem across many different populations.
To highlight the problem, researchers have taken to the streets to ask random passers-by questions that any citizen of the world should know in his or her sleep. The answers they receive reflect the abysmal ignorance in which so many choose to live. Each of those questioned went to at least twelve years of school, yet even the most prominent figures and events in history are a blur in many minds. If it didn’t take place yesterday, and it didn’t happen to someone I know, it gets lost in the mist.
You don’t have to be a history buff to recognize the name “Napoleon,” for instance, or to have at least a nodding acquaintance with the salient facts pertaining to that man and his times. Ditto for other world leaders, empires, wars, revolutions, and catastrophes throughout the ages. At least, you’d think so.
But despite living in a country that provides free education, and despite the plethora of available books and easy access to facts about the world they inhabit, too many of the respondents returned blank faces, sheepish titters, or stunningly wrong answers. It’s embarrassing.
Shopping Lists
For a Jew, anything pertaining to Eretz Yisroel transcends the category of “current events” and becomes family news. As a consequence, most of us are not only aware but trying in our various ways to connect and to help. When it comes to the rest of the world, however, a rather appalling ignorance appears to prevail these days. Even in places where kids are getting a good education, they’re choosing to filter out anything that doesn’t interest them. Which, all too often, is anything not directly connected to their own day-to-day lives.
Another high school memory: one of our teachers standing at the front of the room, trying desperately to interest us in current events. “What’s going to happen when you girls start shidduchim?” the teacher asked. “What are you going to talk about if you don’t even know what’s going on in the news?”
I remember how uproariously we laughed at the notion of discussing current events on dates. But our teacher did have a point. You don’t have to read the paper from start to finish each day to be cognizant of what’s happening on the world stage. Even if we feel helpless to change or affect the course of events, it’s our right and our responsibility to at least know that they’re taking place. To stay in the loop of world affairs is the mark of a thinking person, and of one who cares. There’s no pride in ignorance.
I’m not talking about becoming immersed in history or over-involved in every changing present-day issue. It’s understandable to be more enthralled by the ups and downs of our personal lives than by those of the world around us. But to be completely out of touch is, to my mind, unacceptable. Especially for a member of our nation. The Jewish people affect everything, and everything affects the Jews. And that demands a certain amount of basic awareness.
Shopping Lists
I guess the point of this rant is to underscore the need, in my humble opinion, for children, teenagers and even grown-ups to stretch our minds a bit. If you were stuck on a desert island with only one printed sheet of paper to read, would you prefer a page from a classic work of literature or a grocery list? When we limit our minds to only the small and trivial, they run the risk of coming to resemble that shopping list. That is, unless we feed it something more interesting to chew on.
We are busy people, leading busy lives. Our brains can become overrun by plans and schedules and the thousand-and-one details that need attending to on a daily basis. The march of things demanding our attention can seem endless. Still, it’s important, I think, to try to enlarge our minds, and those of our offspring, by remembering that there’s a larger world out there. And that it matters.
History matters, because it provides a context for today. Everything we commemorate in our Jewish calendar is set against a backdrop of world events. Becoming aware of that backdrop can enrich our understanding. And current events matter, because they form the backdrop of our own lives.
Stepping beyond our tight mental boundaries to ponder other people, places and times can help us become bigger people. Hashem created a huge and multifarious world, and we ought to be at least minimally aware of what’s going on in it.
We choose what to let into our busy minds. I’m not saying that world events should take precedence over our Yom Tov menus or what to wear to the next N’shei luncheon. But it might be interesting to invite them in for a few minutes now and then. To help make our minds, and our worlds, just a little bit bigger.
