Tiny Imperfect Fiction 04

Fred went to school for 19 years to learn about the world. He learned everything about the world – had quantified all the data, categorized various qualities of the data, and memorized most of the stories that had taken place in the world.

Fred knew how the whole world worked on microcosmic level, how it worked on a global scale, but he never once learned about himself. He didn’t learn about human beings. To clarify, he learned about his physical body, how the blood and oxygen gets around from cell to organ. He learned a tiny bit about Freud and Jung and the brain, and even a little bit about what happens when a man and a woman like each other and get together and what can happen. He learned about what to put in his body and what not to put in his body. But he never learned about himself. He was never taught or encouraged to explore what went into making him: Fred, the person. 

He could wax rhapsodic for days about how weather patterns formed, describe all the intricacies that converged to create wind, and everything that has to come together to make a wave, a good day in the stock market, or a successful algorithm. But when it came to everything that has to come together to make a person, Fred was rather blank. 

That’s why Fred secretly loved podcasts. Because finally, every single day, for the rest of his life, he could learn about himself in 100 different ways that no school had ever taught him. And he discovered that he was the most interesting thing in the whole world that he had ever learned about.