"One learns more from listening than speaking. And both the wind and the people who continue to live close to nature still have much to tell us which we cannot hear within university walls"

Learning flourishes in silence and receptivity. When a person listens instead of speaking, they open themselves to new perspectives, insights, and truths that may elude those who only voice their own thoughts. Listening cultivates humility, it is an acknowledgment that others, or even nature itself, may possess wisdom that one does not have. Speaking can be an act of reinforcing what is already known; listening, by contrast, is an invitation to growth, an acceptance that understanding deepens not through assertion, but through absorption.

The comparison to the wind evokes a sense of ancient and subtle wisdom. The wind, ever-present and uncontainable, carries stories and lessons across landscapes and generations. Likewise, there are people, often those who dwell near the rhythms and realities of the natural world, whose ways of knowing are shaped by a closeness to the non-human environment. Their knowledge does not reside in books or formal lectures but is lived, practical, and deeply entwined with the ecosystems they inhabit.

Academic learning, represented by “university walls,” is valuable, but it carries limitations. The walls are both physical and metaphorical: they can confine thinking to the realm of analysis and abstraction, sometimes separating us from direct experience. There are truths and understandings, whispered by the wind, embodied by indigenous peoples, farmers, and those whose lives are intimately linked to the natural order, that cannot be discovered through academic study alone. These are lessons in patience, observation, respect, and attunement to cycles and patterns that lie beyond human control.

Real wisdom often requires leaving behind the comfort of established knowledge and embracing the vulnerability of not knowing. It asks us to immerse ourselves in humility and curiosity, to listen to the voices, whether human or elemental, that exist beyond formal education. By doing so, we reconnect with a broader, older, and perhaps more profound understanding of life and our place within it.