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Where the Sun Goes When it Sets
Once, in a bygone era, I asked my teacher: When the sun sets, where does it go?
She told me that it waits for us just over the horizon. I accepted that, then. I learned later that the world was round, that it spun upon an axis and that it revolved around the sun as dictated by forces of gravity and inertia and Celestia’s will. I learned the equations and formula that spelled out the abstract concepts of mass and centrifugal energy and how magic affected those forces.
So when a foal, much like my younger self, asked me that same question, I had a much better answer. I explained lines of delineation and the visual lag caused by the limit of lightspeed in vacuum. I had entire charts and graphs ready to answer the question in the most complete and nuanced way possible. I had prepared speeches jostling for space in my head that I had been writing since I too asked that question.
Short Cut, the inquisitive colt, started at me in blank incomprehension. His father, Snips, also seemed lost as I continued on. Needless to say, the parent-teacher meeting ended awkwardly shortly there after. I felt drained as the stallions left me alone in my office. It was not the first time I had faced that gulf that exists between my intellect and that of other ponies. I cursed it and my own blindness to it, again.
I know I am smart. Smarter than most of my peers and elders in the same manner they are smarter than the majority of common housepets. The ponies around me aren't stupid. I learned to avoid that trap early on, setting myself apart from them because I was smart, ergo, they were dumb. I am just smarter. But that knowledge offers me no solace when the divide is so vast.
These days I ask my teacher, now my friend and colleague: Is this how it is for you, with your amassed wisdom and experience?
She nods and lays a wing comfortably across my back. She tells me that when I was younger, before the gulf developed, she saw in me a great potential and that she did not want to overwhelm me. She answered my questions with anecdotes, fables and poetry so that I could grasp concepts. I was not ready for the full truth and the hard math. The answers were designed to make me more curious. To fuel that hunger for more information.
She does as she always has and marvels me with her foresight and ability to boil it down ages of knowledge to something easily digestible. She tells me I am like the set sun. I sit just over the horizon from everypony elses’ view. Like the sun, I am forever waiting for the world to catch up, looking back over my shoulder and encouraging it along. Why else had I elected to become a teacher?
I reflect on that wisdom, poke it and pry at it. I tease out the greater meaning of her words slowly and it becomes clear. I teach foals so that they may one day cross the gulf that divides us. I teach not to impart knowledge itself, but to give others the thirst for it.
So I sit, content once again and await the next foal to ask me where to sun goes when it sets. Now I know the answer.
She told me that it waits for us just over the horizon. I accepted that, then. I learned later that the world was round, that it spun upon an axis and that it revolved around the sun as dictated by forces of gravity and inertia and Celestia’s will. I learned the equations and formula that spelled out the abstract concepts of mass and centrifugal energy and how magic affected those forces.
So when a foal, much like my younger self, asked me that same question, I had a much better answer. I explained lines of delineation and the visual lag caused by the limit of lightspeed in vacuum. I had entire charts and graphs ready to answer the question in the most complete and nuanced way possible. I had prepared speeches jostling for space in my head that I had been writing since I too asked that question.
Short Cut, the inquisitive colt, started at me in blank incomprehension. His father, Snips, also seemed lost as I continued on. Needless to say, the parent-teacher meeting ended awkwardly shortly there after. I felt drained as the stallions left me alone in my office. It was not the first time I had faced that gulf that exists between my intellect and that of other ponies. I cursed it and my own blindness to it, again.
I know I am smart. Smarter than most of my peers and elders in the same manner they are smarter than the majority of common housepets. The ponies around me aren't stupid. I learned to avoid that trap early on, setting myself apart from them because I was smart, ergo, they were dumb. I am just smarter. But that knowledge offers me no solace when the divide is so vast.
These days I ask my teacher, now my friend and colleague: Is this how it is for you, with your amassed wisdom and experience?
She nods and lays a wing comfortably across my back. She tells me that when I was younger, before the gulf developed, she saw in me a great potential and that she did not want to overwhelm me. She answered my questions with anecdotes, fables and poetry so that I could grasp concepts. I was not ready for the full truth and the hard math. The answers were designed to make me more curious. To fuel that hunger for more information.
She does as she always has and marvels me with her foresight and ability to boil it down ages of knowledge to something easily digestible. She tells me I am like the set sun. I sit just over the horizon from everypony elses’ view. Like the sun, I am forever waiting for the world to catch up, looking back over my shoulder and encouraging it along. Why else had I elected to become a teacher?
I reflect on that wisdom, poke it and pry at it. I tease out the greater meaning of her words slowly and it becomes clear. I teach foals so that they may one day cross the gulf that divides us. I teach not to impart knowledge itself, but to give others the thirst for it.
So I sit, content once again and await the next foal to ask me where to sun goes when it sets. Now I know the answer.