My  most influential teacher—we’ll call him H— helped guide my imagination rather than told it what to do. He spoke with his entire body as though the air itself was the telling it how to fit in. By being himself, he inspired in me a yearning for earned respect that only the experience of a full life lived could give. I once learned he had attended theatre school with the great actor of our time, Daniel Day Lewis. When confronted about it, he confirmed with such an absence of vanity, I was left with a lesson in the power modesty I will never forget. As a film director, he was clear, confident, and seeing around the people he directed. You can only be successful in something like directing if you have the skills of seeing the individual and their potential—an idea that exemplifies the importance of personalized learning. H was a teacher of mine while attending the Vancouver Film School for Acting in Film and Television. He did not teach me to read nor write nor count, he taught that some doors can only be opened when the mind, body, and environment flow together—or at very least notice one another. That lesson has guided me through all my scientific training and improved my access to becoming an effective learner more than anything else. As almost everyone, my path to the present was anything but linear in nature. Linearity implies that side tracking from “the path” is, in essence, inefficient and—more precisely—a breaking of the dimensional rules. Luckily for us, life is for living, learning, looking, listening and extending in a much higher ordered space, where divergences make discoveries and growth towards individual excellence. H’s way of living and teaching reminds me of something I had read some years ago from the introduction of Behave—The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst by author and neuroendocrinologist Robert M. Sapolsky. In essence, he takes a captivating observed behaviour by someone and gives explanations for the behavior from apparent perspectives of multiple specialists (ie. a neurologist, psychologist, endocrinologist or evolutionary biologist). Each specialist’s explanation is related to their training so who is correct? Well solely none, but totally all. The lessons I’m relating come out something like: truth can be demonstrated when parts contribute to the whole.
The Hawaiian bobtail squid (Euprymna scolopes) is a tiny (~3cm) shrimp feeder that flows with the waters of the central pacific where it searches for food. The bioluminescent Aliivibrio fischeri is a symbiotic bacterial species that lives and proliferates in a special niche cavity within in the squid. The bioluminescence eliminates the squid’s shadows on the ocean floor through illumination, acting as a cloaking device—symbiotically acting as one to improve the whole. Hawaiian bobtail squid 2.png. (2020, May 9). Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Hawaiian_bobtail_squid_2.png&oldid=418084159
