Jiro Horikoshi loved planes. He loved them so much that just by closely inspecting one he knew of its potential and whether that plane was reaching it or falling short of what it could be. Jiro knew planes in order to understand them. He understood them, because he loved them.  Knowledge is power, but knowledge is also love. One cannot love without understanding. However, one does not seek to understand without initially loving.

 

(The Wind Rises, Miyazaki)

This is the way with everything in life. Those who seek to become experts are doing so out of love. Just as love is limitless, so is understanding.  You can never know too much about something that you love. There are no boundaries.

I am a person who likes to calculate. From an early age, I remember calculating how much time it will take for me to read a book by taking my average reading speed and multiplying it by the number of pages in that book. I have learned to do this with everything in life as second nature. This is the way that I love. However, part of loving is understanding that everything and everyone needs to be loved differently.

I have yet to learn to play the bass, but I do want to learn, not because it is necessary or because I think it’s a cool instrument, but because I love it. I love it enough to learn. I love the way it sounds with certain notes and there are some parts of the way it sounds that I cannot describe. Some notes sound like “yess!” while other notes sound like “ummm.”  I know that this is just how good music sounds to the ears of many, but sometimes I just want to take those notes and hold them.

(That’s how I imagine hugging a song looks like)

In my search for finding learning tools I looked up the approximate time it might take someone to learn to play the bass. What I found was incredible. What I found was nothing. There is no approximate time it takes to learn to play the bass, because learning the bass is infinite. As is becoming one with any instrument, a skateboard, scientific theory or a person.

Love is infinite and so is knowledge. To love is to want to know more. The more you know about something that you love, the more you have to base your affection on, even if you uncover some not-so-beautiful facts along the way.

 “Planes are a beautiful dream, a cursed dream just waiting to be swallowed up by the sky.”(The wind Rises)

 The more you know about anything, the more you uncover its imperfections and see it for what it truly is. And much like with love, you will not overlook those facts, but understand how they contribute to its beauty.

If knowledge is love, then love is not blind. If anything, it is a telescope with infinite settings and reflectors that allow you to view one object in all of its many forms.