“Kind, dass must du wissen ! – Child, you must know this”. What Ilearnt from my father.

This year will mark five years since my father, an extraordinary man, passed away.

He was a complex character – a highly intelligent man who could understand extremely difficult concepts and explain them in such a way that anyone could understand them.

Yet he was a technically challenged - he found it difficult to grasp technology; he once listened to the same music on his car’s CD player for two weeks after he had inadvertently hit the “repeat” function.

One of his continual sayings to his children was “Kind, dass must du wissen.” Translated from the German “Child, you must know this.”

He understood intimately that learning never stops. He read constantly. He enjoyed interesting facts.

Dad would always cut out newspaper articles that he thought his family would find interesting, give them to us and we would end up discussing them over dinner. This happened even during the time I was living interstate. He would save the ones I missed until I visited.

He even attempted to understand the basics of computers and the World Wide Web, but never quite mastered it. My father introduced us all to travel; my first overseas trip to New Zealand in 1975 and then West Germany (as it was) in 1976 opened the world to me.

He understood that learning was “something you must do”.

Phils_osophy

It’s only now that I begin to fully appreciate my father’s learning philosophy. Sadly for me, I cannot share my joy of learning with him any longer.

So just learn....and enjoy it!

Phil