Last week, a friend and I attended PechaKucha night, which happened to be hosted by our favorite teacher. We didn’t know exactly what to expect – we had never before been – but were confident, at least, that we might be entertained for the few hours it occupied.
It was great! From monologues on the “transformative power of music”, to orations on the power of reading and the danger of banning books, the passion in each of the six-minute, forty-second presentations was contagious.
The experience reminded me how much I don’t know, the breadth of experience and thought. Some presentations brought words to feeling and sentiment I possess but haven’t executed on – “buy the ticket”, for example, “leave home, and experience other cultures” for another. There were nine presentations in total, and my brief survey here obviously doesn’t account for all of them, but I enjoyed every one of them; they each had their unique insight and poignant moral.
The experience comes shortly after my discovering Gurwinder’s Substack and his periodic “Mind-Expanding Concepts” posts. There’s a certain kind of fulfillment I get from learning different, sometimes idiosyncratic ideas; PechaKucha night was a Gurwinder post on steroids. And I’m certain this fulfillment isn’t unique: if you’re interested, look for new experiences, perspectives, and opportunities for thought. I don’t pretend to be some sort of authority on the subject, but it seemed important enough to write down. At the very least, I’m going to increase the frequency of these sorts of experiences in my own life.
Philosophy seems interesting and unlike much of what I’ve been exposed to. That’s probably next for me, but it’s a huge area of study, with so much to learn, and I haven’t even started. According to Jared Henderson, Plato’s Dialogues is a good place to start.