Edward Frenkel

But it's difficult because, you know, you go through education system, and for many of us, it's not especially...

helpful for maintaining that connection that we kind of like we're being told certain things that we accept take for granted and so on and little by little and also we get hit every time we act different okay every time we act that doesn't in a way that doesn't fit sort of the pattern we get punished by the teachers get punished by

parents, and so on.

That's right.

Nobody wants to look like an idiot, you know?

Once you start growing up, or you think you're growing up.

In the beginning, you don't even think in these terms.

You just play.

You're just playing.

And you are open to possibilities, to these infinite possibilities that this world presents to us.

So how do we... I'm not saying that education system should not be also kind of taming that a little bit.

Obviously, the goal is balance, that acquiring knowledge,

so that we can be more mature and more discerning, more discriminating in terms of our approach to the world, in terms of our connections to the world and people and so on.

But how do we do that while also preserving that innocence of a child?

My guess is that there is no formula for this.

It is

A life is an answer.

Every life, every human being is one particular answer to how do we find balance.

But we can look up to the great ones who have

credentials in the sense that they have shown and they have proved that they have done something that other humans appreciate, our civilization appreciates, say, Isaac Newton or Alexander Grotendieck or Pablo Picasso.