Paths we tread on

There’s a Zen expression: “Enlightenment can come only after humility.”
Carl Sagan once said:
“In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”

It’s such an important message. Stand up for what you believe, but don’t be so stubborn that you can’t learn and change from another’s reasoned argument. So the question I would ask is this: How best to enlighten our others and ourselves?

By forcing your opinion on someone else you will usually meet only resistance. Even the young resist being told how to think and what to do. Which would explain why one of the first vocabulary words of children is "No"

No matter how much you press against a wall, it will not move against force. By forcing it, you will only destroy the wall, not move it along your path. Reason with it. Search for the crack in the wall, the opening that leads beyond it and perhaps it will follow.

This is what Zen call the path of enlightenment.
The path not to just our own understanding, but the passing along our knowledge to others. Knowledge is pointless without sharing it. We are born, we live, we learn, and we die. If you pass on from this life never having shared a glimmer of what you have learned in your life, then your life has no meaning. Only by sharing what you learn with the world around you, and learning from them, do you truly reach your full potential as a person. In a paradoxical view of life, this scenario can be compared to Schrödinger's cat. You are neither alive, nor dead if you never share your life experience with others. You exist in a state of both inside your box. Break through the walls of your box and be alive.

But also to be aware of, not all walls are meant to be broken through. You will not always be right in life, this is a universal fact. The walls you seek to pass will instead be waves of knowledge towering over you, moving inexorably towards you to push you down the path it flows. Do not fight it, instead let it wash over you and through you. Feel the knowledge crest through your mind, and accept it, become one with it. Keep yourself, but also accept that knowledge and make it part of you. There are over 6.8 Billion people in the world, with a growth rate of almost 7 million people per year. That is at the very least 6.8 billion unique possible ideas or perceptions of the world. Not all will be correct, but not all will be wrong. Accept knowledge in any form it comes in.

Step outside the box and see what paths in which you can make your own waves.