Learning
Learning creates accomplishment. For me, 1990 was a good year. In the early summer I shut down the Panama Canal and walked away clean. I was Chief Engineer aboard the USNS Wilkes. A propulsion failure caused the ship's bow to strike and damage a lock gate. Repairs required a shut down. Shipmates joked that I accomplished what the Japanese couldn’t in WW2.
In December I boarded the SS Cleveland in Sasebo, Japan as Chief Engineer. The vessel loaded 13 thousand tons of ammo for the 1st Marine Division. I was the only licensed American engineer aboard. By Coast Guard regulations for a mariner class American vessel to sail, a ship with two 900 pound boilers and a 30 thousand horsepower steam turbine for main propulsion, there should have been five.
The company hired foreign engineers as temporary replacements. The automation of the vessel propulsion systems compensated for their training.
The ammo was delivered on time, February 7th, in El Jubail. The Marine Core did their job liberating Kuwait.
In both situations my learning of ships, of marine engineering, proved valuable in effectively dealing with the various problems either situation created. My most valuable learning though, has been of self. This enabled me to think, learn, and express my perception of a problem.
One problem involves the development of the individual, their thinking that creates learning.
Consider, a reason God created religion was to help man become free. This began with the freedom of the Jewish people at Mt. Sinai. A process of thinking and learning while living within the parameters of The Ten Commandments, of what is good and true, that created development, the transition from bondage to freedom, the becoming of one’s own.
Today, with the existence of The Ten Commandments throughout many parts of the world, a person should be able to conclude that the opportunity of becoming one’s own, the freedom of self, would also simultaneously exist. It doesn’t.
A reason for this failure is an ignorance, an Anti-Semitism against any learning of Jewish thought. Judaism is also of a learning and development of thinking. The ability to think is learned. Consider, the freedom of self.
© Ernest G Jackson 2023 All Rights Reserved | 369 words.