Mary spends her first 20 years locked up in a large room. All her reading materials are about chocolate. She watches video lectures about chocolate every day. She learns about the importance of cacao, and its uses throughout history. Chemists teach her about the ingredients of chocolate and how different processes can vary its chemistry. She watches videos of the world’s leading nutritionists lecture on the makeup and value of chocolate. Mary memorizes the benefits of eating chocolate versus the drawbacks. Videos of historians teach her how ancient people discovered cacao and about the many uses they found for it throughout history, e.g., how chocolate was even used for currency. Mary learns how soldiers depended on chocolate for energy during combat and how they used it to befriend children of different cultures. She learns how “chocolate” symbolized American abundance to poverty stricken peoples of other countries. Sociologists exclaim how chocolate is used for gifts and rewards. They give examples of it being gifted in various forms on major holidays and anniversaries. At the end of her studies, she writes her dissertation on chocolate and is awarded a Ph.D. with honors. There is only one thing she has never done. She has never made, touched, smelled or tasted chocolate.
After she receives her degree, a little girl asked her if she likes chocolate. How does Mary answer?
What kind of understanding of chocolate can Mary have if she never actually made, touched, smelled or tasted chocolate? What good is what we know about chocolate if we’ve never made or tasted it? To know what chocolate is, you have to make it and taste it. You have to act.
All art is a reaction to the first line drawn. Unless the artist sits in front of the canvas and paints, there can be no art. Unless the writer sits down and starts to type, there can be no book. Unless the musician plays their instrument, there can be no music. Unless the sculptor begins to chip away at the marble, there can be no sculpture. Unless the explorer begins the journey, there can be no discovery.
It is the same with everything in life, even civilizations; unless one acts, nothing is created or discovered. In the classical world of Greece and Rome and in all earlier times, civilization could exist only in warm climates where horses could stay alive through the winter by grazing. Without grass in winter you could not have horses, and without horses, you could not have urban civilization. Most people accepted this as a law of nature, which to them, meant humans were destined to live in warm climates.
Sometime during the so-called dark ages, some unknown person took action. He invented hay which was a way to bring food to the horses instead of bringing horses to the food. Forests were turned into meadows, hay was reaped and stored, and civilization moved north over the Alps. So hay gave birth to Vienna and Paris and London and Berlin, and later to Moscow and New York. Unless this unknown person had acted and invented hay, civilization would not have prospered.
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of no consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
Michael Michalko
Imagineer7's Weblog 