(MENAFN- Jordan Times) Albert Einstein is credited with the statement: 'If the bees disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.'
This perceptive warning is not my main focus, but the bee itself is.
According to mechanics scientists, a bee theoretically should not be able to fly. But, the saying goes, the bee is not aware of this fact and it goes on flying.
Imagine that someone is endowed with King Solomon's ability to talk to animals and insects. This Dr Dolittle informs the bee that it should not be able to fly. The bee, in response to this crippling news and aware if its weakness, loses its ability to fly and stops doing so.
Then, Einstein's prophecy would be fulfilled.
I have seen it more than once in my life. A young student in my school had the gymnastic ability to walk on a tight rope at six metres of height.
The students found this to be a great feat that would encourage him on to go to higher limits.
The fun continued until he was spotted by a physics teacher who reprimanded him and told him how dangerous that venture was.
Stupefied by the teachers reaction, he never did that again, and we may have lost a potential world-class acrobat.
In his famous poem titled 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard', English Poet Thomas Grey lamented the dead farmers buried there.
To him, some of them might have had great talents that the pompous never allowed to surface or to blossom.
He says: 'Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid/Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire/Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed/Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.'
The questions which linger on my mind all the time and annoy me a lot can be phrased as follows: Why does an Arab team of young football players perform well and beats big country teams but loses that skill when they mature?
What happens to them inbetween?
Why do some of our Arab institutions act robustly and creatively in their entry years, and then they age and deteriorate a few short years later?
Why do promising and competitive 'A' students fail to make the breakthrough they were supposed to perform, and fail when they stay at home? Why do their colleagues who resided abroad prosper and achieve their fullest potential?
Do those who succeed do so despite their environment and not because of it?
We need to put these questions to our pedagogical experts and not to pedagogues. Sociologists should also be concerned.
Why do we have to break everything that is beautiful and render it dead before it is actually dead?
Talented and artistically gifted people are our most important economic asset. They are our bees. They fly without having the mechanical ability to do so.
If we just concentrate on breaking their will and reminding them of their shortcomings, they will never give us what we desperately need, i.e., the honey and the fertilisation of ideas.
If our bees die, then our hope to out-survive them will be lost.
In this regard, ample gestures of gratitude should be extended to Their Majesties King Abdullah and Queen Rania, and to His Royal Highness Prince Hussein for their relentless efforts to encourage talent and to boost our pool of competitive youth.
The writer is a former Royal Court chief, deputy prime minister and member of Senate. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.
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