Could we even consider ignorance, or could I say lack of experience, a part of the journey?

Bird Droppings September 22, 2026

Could we even consider ignorance, or could I say lack of experience, a part of the journey?

Over the past few days, I have been looking at or pondering the idea of experiences and how many people do not have experiences, for example, in comparison to my own.  I have led a full life, and I do consider myself well-read. As I walk through the aisles at Kroger or Publix, I see multitudes of people who may have experienced more than I have, but most, I would say, have not. I hate to call someone ignorant because they never raised sheep, went to the Everglades Wonder Gardens in South Florida, saw a Florida panther on the boardwalk at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, or met Dwayne Allman, shook hands, and received a check.

It was a few months ago, but it hit me when my grandson could not see an egret on the reservoir. We were driving across the dam and could not slow down. A car was behind us, and he did not know what an egret was. Had it been a green heron or great blue heron, he would have been able to see it, I am sure. My brilliant grandson- I would not call him ignorant, but inexperienced- we did look it up in our Audubon book as soon as we could.

This is my first morning back home. I was only gone from home for a few days, but the journey was much longer than the miles traveled. Much of it was inward. I found myself seeing things sometimes for the first time and sometimes for perhaps the thousandth time, and yet somehow, they were always new. I listened to the ocean, to the waves breaking against the shells along the shoreline. The ocean is never still, and yet it gives me a profound sense of stillness. Perhaps it is the sound. Perhaps it is the smell. Perhaps it is simply knowing that those waves were there long before I arrived and will continue long after I leave. Now I am home. This morning I returned to my sunrise photographic adventure, traveling familiar roads and looking across familiar fields. And once again, I am amazed by how often I discover something for the first time in a place I have seen a thousand times. Perhaps the journey did not end when I came home. Perhaps coming home is simply another part of the journey.

I can tell you exactly how many miles I traveled or how many hours I had gone. I can check the dash for my overall miles per gallon and distances, and I can look at my phone and camera and see the images I took along the way. Those things are easy to measure. What I cannot measure is the journey itself. How do I measure sitting quietly while an osprey flies overhead? How do I measure watching a rainbow appear and disappear over the marsh, or listening to waves roll shells along the shoreline? How do I measure seeing something I have seen a thousand times and suddenly seeing it differently? Perhaps that is where experience enters the picture.

My grandson could not see the egret because, in a sense, he did not yet know what he was looking for. The bird was there. His eyes were working perfectly well. But he did not have an egret stored away among his experiences. Once we opened the Audubon book and gave that white bird a name, we added something to his world. The next time an egret stands along the edge of the reservoir, perhaps he will see it before I do.

That makes me reconsider the word ignorance. We tend to use it as an insult, when sometimes ignorance simply means that we have not experienced something yet. There are undoubtedly things I walk past every day without seeing them because no one has ever shown me how to see them. Maybe experience is not simply accumulating years, miles, degrees, books, photographs, or stories. Maybe experience is gradually enlarging the world we can see. And perhaps that is why, after seventy-six years, I can still drive the same road before sunrise and find something I have never seen before.

“If I want to justify my existence and continue to be obsessed with the notion that I’ve got to do something for humanity, well, teaching ought to quell that obsession — and if I can ever get around to an intelligent view of matters, intelligent criticism of contemporary values ought to be useful to the world. This gets back again to ……The best way to help mankind is through the perfection of yourself.” Joseph Campbell

It was so many years ago, at first, I thought my goal was to do something for mankind, as in some great event or task. As I sat and wondered this morning, I found in Campbell’s thought that so often, by searching for and bettering ourselves, we truly help mankind. Earlier, I wrote to a friend about trying to understand and reduce ignorance. I find it funny how, in politics and during political campaigns, ignorance seems rampant.

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Attributed to Derek Bok

Working with children becomes interesting because each day you can almost see bits and pieces of ignorance—or perhaps inexperience—fall away. A child discovers a word, an idea, a bird, a culture, or another way of looking at something. Yet the child spends only part of the day with us. I used to call what happened during the remaining hours the sixteen-hour syndrome. Everything outside the classroom—family, friends, television, social media, community, culture, and simply life itself—continues teaching too. Sometimes those sixteen hours reinforce what happened at school, and sometimes they undo it. Then morning comes, and teacher and student begin again.

“The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.” Wayne Dyer

I live in a place that constantly borders on ignorance, and I want so terribly to cross over to the side of wisdom. Yet perhaps there is no border to cross. Perhaps wisdom itself is another journey. Throughout history, access to knowledge has often been unequal. For centuries, literacy belonged to relatively few people, and the ability to read gave those who possessed it access to ideas and information unavailable to many others. Knowledge can be power, but perhaps even more importantly, knowledge gives us another way of seeing.

“Naiveté in grown-ups is often charming, but when coupled with vanity, it is indistinguishable from stupidity.” Eric Hoffer

Looking at politics, Hoffer’s words make me wonder. Political language is carefully chosen, and during elections we hear words and phrases designed to appeal to different audiences. But how often do we stop and look beyond words? I remember the debate over renewing the federal assault-weapons ban in 2004. Even in the years following September 11, with terrorism very much in the national consciousness, the legislation became caught in the larger political struggle over firearms.

“The opposite of love is not hate; the opposite of love is ignorance.” Brian Hwang

In search of knowledge and understanding, so many roads can be walked. We can search in books, in schools, in our families, and life in general, but it must entail a search. To assume you are there is to cease the journey, and to cease is to assume you have reached the destination. We are born with a starting point, point A, and when we die, we have reached point B. What connects A and B is crucial. I found over the past few days, as I traveled and spoke with so many people, that this journey is very circular and is spiraling, growing, evolving, moving, liquid in its ever-changing, growing phenomenon.

“Life is about the journey, not the destination,” Steven Tyler, Aerosmith.

I listen to the words and read what sometimes seems to me the gibberish of politicians and wonder how different we really are from generations before us. A hundred years ago, people argued about Indian Territory and reservations. In our own time, immigration, same-sex marriage, race, religion, and other differences have become subjects around which political rhetoric is built. The issues change, but I wonder whether our human tendency to divide ourselves into us and them changes nearly as quickly.

I remember reading a National Geographic account of a slave ship’s recovery. Human beings were bought and sold as commodities. Iron, beads, weapons, and other goods were exchanged in a trade that reduced individual lives to monetary value. The Henrietta Marie, for example, carried 274 captive Africans on its final voyage; about eighty died crossing the Atlantic, and the survivors were sold in Jamaica. Shackles recovered from the wreck centuries later included ones small enough for children.

It is difficult for me to comprehend that human beings could do this to other human beings—and equally difficult to ignore how recently our laws struggled with the meaning of equality. In 1857, the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision denied U.S. citizenship to Black people descended from enslaved Africans. The Civil War and Reconstruction brought the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the 14th Amendment, which established citizenship for people born or naturalized in the United States.

Then, in 1879, Standing Bear, a Ponca chief, had to stand before a federal court while the government argued that an Indian was not even a “person” entitled to seek a writ of habeas corpus. Judge Elmer Dundy ruled that Standing Bear was indeed a person within the meaning of the law. This was not ancient history.

“Only to the white man was nature a wilderness, and only to him was the land ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us, it was tame, Earth was bountiful, and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.” Luther Standing Bear

This morning, I went driving as I so often do, taking pictures and watching the sunrise. Later, I sat for thirty minutes in the stillness of morning. Mourning doves were cooing around me. Other birds were just beginning to wake. A woodpecker started working on the old black walnut trunk near our house. And I felt at ease. So many thoughts passed through my mind as I sat listening in the barely lit morning. Perhaps all those experiences are scraps of paper.

An egret beside a reservoir. An osprey overhead. A rainbow over a marsh. Waves rolling shells along the shoreline. A conversation with a stranger. Something learned from a grandson. Something remembered from seventy-six years ago. I discovered something this morning on a road I have traveled a thousand times. We pick them up along the journey and put them in our pockets. Perhaps wisdom comes when we finally begin putting the scraps together., I sat for thirty minutes in the stillness of morning. Mourning doves were cooing around me, and various other birds were just waking up. A woodpecker started on the old black walnut trunk near our house, and I felt at ease. So many thoughts passed through my mind, sitting and listening in the barely lit morning.  I sat down and thought about what I must do today. May peace be with you all, my friends, and please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and your heart and always give thanks. Namaste.  

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

docbird

I am sharing some good words from a friend’s Facebook page, as I read how true this simple thought is.  Elder’s Meditation of the Day:

“Life is like a path…and we all have to walk the path… As we walk…we’ll find experiences like little scraps of paper in front of us along the way. We must pick up those pieces of scrap paper and put them in our pocket… Then, one day, we will have enough scraps of paper to put together and see what they say… Read the information and take it to heart.” Uncle Frank Davis (quoting his mother), PAWNEE