Learning What Can’t Be Taught

It was the fourth of August 2019 precisely when a Twitter user shared his concern about my silence.

I responded:

“Sometimes not saying anything speaks volumes. You see, silence can never be misquoted. I’m growing tired of repeating myself. I’m good.

I was meditating and learning from within. I was just sharing with a friend how to engage in a dying society. You can’t force your ideology on anyone. People have to learn the way they want to learn and teachers/shepherds must have learnt what cannot be taught to make sense of valuable engagement void of chronomicide.

I am sure you are wondering how one can learn what cannot be taught. Let me share this story maybe it might trigger an epiphany.

Once upon a time, there lived in Yakoba (NE Nigeria) an old man, whose only occupation was caring for and loving his only son, who was a handsome young man. The old man invested all his money on his son’s education.

The young man went away for a few years and acquired an education at a well known university under the great scholars of that age.

The day had arrived for the son to return from his studies and the old man waited at the door for his son.

When the son came and met his father, the old man looked into his eyes and felt great disappointment. “What have you learnt my son?” he asked, “I have learnt everything there was to be learnt, father”, he said. “But have you learnt what cannot be taught?” asked the father.

“Go, my son and learn what cannot be taught”, said the old man.

The young man went back to his master and asked him to teach him what cannot be taught.

“Go away to the mountains with these four hundred sheep and come back when they are one thousand”, said the master.

The young man went to the mountains & became a shepherd. There for the first time he encountered a silence. He had no one to talk to.

The sheep did not understand his language. In his desperation, he would talk to them but they would look back at him as if to say he was stupid.

Slowly but surely he began to forget all his worldly knowledge, his ego, his pride and he became quiet like the sheep and great wisdom and humility came to him.

At the end of two years when the number of sheep had grown to one thousand, he returned to his master and fell on his feet. “Now you have learnt what cannot be taught,” said the master.

Sometimes the value of your education (both formal and informal) is put to rest when you find yourself in a dying society, where ‘Everyman doeth what seemeth right in their own eyes.’

A time when the truth is outlawed and people wear their lies with pride. A period where hypocrites are the rabbis and priests worshipped by emotional bigots, who want their egos massaged. A time where people get lynched for having a conscience. A period of the reign of the ignorant and riotous mob.

A time where multitudes of words may be futile but your action and undertanding of the things that cannot be taught is the only way you can shine your light in the present darkness.”

End.