(#5614) How different our lives could have been

      As a youngster I was one who was full of questions. The more I learned the more questions I had. In the early days my questions would be answered with logical answers but as my questions became more nuanced the answers were not there. I became somewhat of a bother to my family as they learned themselves that they didn't know how to answer my questions and instead I was told to stop asking questions all the time. They were not in a position to help me with answers so their solution was for me to focus on other things instead of the things I wanted answers of. I think about those times now and realize that my life would have been so much more enlightened had I the knowledge base around me to feed my mind.
     Let me be clear here, I do not hold anyone accountable for my being so inquisitive. I was just that way and unlike a lot of my family around me there were few who were in a position through education that could guide me. It was I who broke the mold in my nuclear family being a high school graduate and then college graduate. A lot of times we are locked into our socio economic statuses because we haven't found a way to grow beyond what has been traditionally our roles. My parents did what they could on educating us to the best of their abilities much like their parents did the same with them. At some point one of us needed to break the mold and move ourselves beyond what was expected and what had been the normal.
     I did that with a lot of help in my early days by spending a lot of time in the library. Where I could access a lot of answers to my questions through the Dewey Decimal System. We now have Wikipedia and Google type information formats that can get us started toward more complex reasonings and facts. Had I had such formats for all the why's I asked that didn't get answered I can only imagine how much more full my life would have been. It seems to me that my nature was a bit stunted in the early to late childhood days and it was because I couldn't find human resources around me to help me find the answers I justifiably needed. Even back then it seemed like lots of people played "hide the ball" when asked about specific things that they were less than eager to share. I hope those days are gone for the next generations as our species can ill afford not to feed the minds of the young with answers to all their questions of why.