by Joanna Richards
Knowledge is power. Hazily, I remember seeing those words embedded on the crooked poster hanging in my high school assembly hall.
There, on the cracked walls with peeling paint, those words remained blur to me. They bore no semblance of meaning to me back then.
In fact, lots of things then didn’t make much sense to me. Specifically, why I felt a crushing weight digging into my mind. Or why I had incessant thoughts in my head, demanding that I prove my worth to a harsh audience.
I learnt ways to express myself through creative writing, but even that didn’t unburden my mind. Most people said that these troubles and feelings would recede over time, like ocean waves trudging back into the dark depths of the sea at the first ray of sunlight. But they never did.
I only realised how hard it was to talk about myself the first time I entered a therapist’s room. The essential oils scent wafting in the room rushed to my embrace but did nothing to soothe the nerves biting beneath my skin.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ he said cautiously, noticing the stiff posture and frantic eyes. Even now, when asked to talk about myself, I still act like a feral animal backed into a corner.
In truth, it’s hard to state who I am when I haven’t really begun to understand that yet. Plus, I always found myself pitching a tent on rocky ground; episodes that wreak havoc when they come, an unfinished art college diploma that haunts me, a mental health diagnosis that morphs at every turn.
Amidst the slippery slope of dropping out of art college, there was an unsatiated question lingering, beckoning me for answers. I found myself watching wildlife documentaries and becoming a temporary volunteer at the local zoo to pass the time.
Now, a year later, when I tell relatives or friends about my pathway to do zoology, they puzzle at how I even thought of pursuing an art-related career before. But to me, art and science are two sides of the same coin.
Art is about observing the minuscule details and capturing its essence to make it your own, while science is the same thing, but with more extravagant terms.
I then realised that the yearning to know more about this strange, wonderful world lit a bonfire inside me that doused the insecurities seated in my mind; it kept me alive.
It gave me the power to control my life and steer it in the direction I wanted. It pushed me to do the things that I enjoy, researching wildlife ecology, expanding and publishing my writing in a magazine and an anthology.
I never knew that curiosity could take me by the hand and lead me away from the edge of the cliff. Then the phrase, ‘knowledge is power’, came to me.
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