“She don’t look at me like Captain save ‘em
Gold Diggin, no she don’t do that
Now she lookin me like inspiration
She wanna be complimentin’ my swag”
On Sunday, I was in a workshop for K1 Britannia’s DIRECT team. We were basically learning how to save your life and such in the event of another disaster. Call me “Captain-Save-Em” (Big jokes, big jokes)! During the workshop, I heard a quote that stuck with me. I’m still processing the quote and building some metaphors and such around it, but I feel ready to share what I’m thinking with you now.
Here’s the quote: “You can teach a monkey to look at its watch, but you can’t teach a monkey to know what time it is.” Trust me; I was spaced out after that because I was thinking of all the areas in life where this quote would be applicable. There are so many areas where I feel like people are force-fed and know “how” to do certain things, but they don’t know “why” they do it. This happens in the workplace, in schools and even in churches.
Many people are taught (trained) to read the Bible and its contents so literally that they miss all the hidden nuggets and the context. Like the scripture that says, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Ohhhhh how I hate to hear people quote that! The context goes so much deeper than the simplistic reasons that we use it for. One must understand that judgement and condemnation are not the same; but what can we expect when we’ve been taught to look at our watches, but are not able to tell the time?!
A lot of us knew how to solve math problems in class, but had no idea how “this was supposed to help us in real life.” So yes, Ms. Derrick (best math teacher ever) could teach us how to do Pythagoras’ theorem, but if we pay attention only to the formula and not try to understand how it actually works, we’re going to fail that test when Ms. Derrick switches up the numbers or format. I feel like school sometimes tries to create trained monkeys instead of #FreeThinkers.
Another aspect that kind of had my mind going was the fact that you can’t teach the monkey to look at its watch and tell you the time (or to really know what time it is) but you can teach the monkey to know when it’s a particular time. Through cognitive training, if you feed that monkey at 1:00pm every day, that monkey will eventually be aware of when that clock strikes 1:00pm. It’s amazing how the brain works! Or is that just the stomach? LOL.
Eh, just a ton load of thoughts. Take it with a grain of salt, but feel free to hit up my socials so that we can discuss it further.
*Cues She Got Her Own by Jamie Foxx feat. Ne-Yo, and Fabolous*
