“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” - Benjamin Franklin
In the olden days, before the winds had torn the earth apart and the waves had forbidden us from the sea, the children would play in the fields. They sang the songs they learnt from their parents, songs admiring the power of the natural world, and other darker ones that told of the end of all life. Those songs they sang, but they did not understand. The meaning was lost on their young minds, too busy dashing through the meadows. It was inevitable that some would eat the poisonous flowers and would complain later of the stomach pain. But it was equally inevitable that another child would do the same the very next day, having already forgotten the past day’s incident.
The adolescents who toiled on the fields and drove the oxen remembered lessons. “Plant the peas before cabbages,” they were told, and they did so. They never questioned the wisdom of their parents who themselves had once been the farmers. But they did question the songs they had learnt as children. How could you sing about the dangers of the wild but ignore the triumphs of man? Were they not the ones who conquered water and told it to flow upwards? And who was to doubt their mastery over the fire they now wielded to keep the threats of beasts at bay? Still, they sang of the Great White Beast whose breath scared even the bears to sleep.
The adults went about their daily business, building houses and teaching children. Most still sang, and now they understood the lessons. For some, learning came naturally, and they knew the power nature still held. For others, the lessons involved losing a finger to learn that wood enjoys company. In this manner, the adults learnt their lessons, taught them to the older children, and told the songs to the younger ones. So long as they stayed, they all learnt.
But some grew weary of their life and chose to move to the louder place, where nature had been cast in chains and was forced to do the bidding of man. Those who left never returned. They had forgotten the lessons that had been passed down to them and thought themselves to be stronger than the world. They remembered only to collect their pieces of metal and slips of paper, and how to choke the air with their steel horses. They forgot in order to learn.
Now we make preparations to leave. This land housed us for hundreds of years, but the air takes its revenge by choking us now, and the trees show their anger by turning fire against us once more. The wind tears through the now-dead fields as the children huddle beneath blankets as we load the carts. The oxen keep their heads down, making their emaciated forms even smaller. As we climb in the wagons to leave, we take one last look at the barren land we left behind us, and past that, towards the loud place that would soon lose their war with nature.
Is it too late to learn?