When the person in the cave gets deep...

Is it not the challenge that keeps your mind sharp and refreshed?

Without the challenge, wouldn't your mind essentially become empty and aloof --stagnant and careless of the world around you?

Without the challenge, wouldn't your life be nothing more than what you already know?

It is the challenge that is the fire.

The shadow in front of you will be the one you begin to know and take form of, give names to, and define.

The shadow will guide you, reward you, and soon you will no longer be defining the shadow, but it will be defining you.

Alright, I am no Philosopher, but am inspired by a man who was. In the "Allegory of the Cave", Plato described how knowledge comes from what you make it --to break away from what is told to you as truth, and then seeing it in true form (your own), is beautiful.

"Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the cave, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth."
Plato. Book VII. The Allegory of the Cave

Instead of depending on others to guide you and teach you something, figure it out first for yourself. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Let it guide you, like the shadow, and then find the light for yourself.

One of the biggest challenges I faced when entering employment at a well established website development firm in Dallas, was disregarding everything I knew about web development (which was not much) and learning what I needed to know in order to communicate with my colleagues. I was hired as an Office Manager, controlling day to day operations that revolve around keeping a small company financially healthy and the employees happy. My office, an enclosed red 15x15 room tucked away behind the reception desk, is dubbed "the cave". I have come to know each person's footsteps walking down the hall behind me, and sometimes I hear a monkey screaming outside of the enclosed walls around me. It wasn't long before the screaming monkey was being launched in my office, scaring me half to death, and finally I was able to pinpoint the master behind it!

I must say, my first year here has been the most challenging. Learning the basic terminology alone has been confusing. It's like reading a book on CSS Web Standard Solutions, except your only background is on the Economics of Finance. Say this is the scenario. How would you go about it?

1. Read and it will absorb. If it hasn't, read more. Even if you don't use the information today, you might be surprised when you are able to recall it tomorrow.
2. Figure it out. Instead of asking what a Cascading Style Sheet is, look it up. Keep it simple for right now.
3. A simple understanding leads you to developing and expanding your knowledge of what you are searching for. Then, will you be able to ask the developer, "What is the benefit of using style sheets as opposed to using regular HTML?"
4. Even then, asking only one developer will limit you to one truth. Do not be satisfied with it because it's not yours. Seek other sources.

"Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good."
Plato. Book VII. The Allegory of the Cave