Photo Credit: Paul Townsend
If you've never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, then you should. It's just a bizarre movie full of random lines that you will be quoting for the rest of your life.
One of my favorite parts in the movie happens towards the end, when King Arthur and his brave knights come across the "Bridge of Death." They must answer five three questions asked by the bridge-keeper.
Watch for yourself:
The first knight gets three easy questions and is allowed to cross the bridge. The second knight, thinking he will get three easy questions, does not answer the third correctly and plummets to his death. The third knight gets three easy questions, but second-guesses on the third and plummets to his death.
When the king steps up, he is asked "what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow." This happens to be a lucky question for King Arthur, since at the beginning of the movie he discussed the difference between African and European swallows in a conversation about coconuts...you have to watch the movie. In any case, he asks the bridge-keeper to clarify what type of swallow, to which the bridge-keeper says, "I don't know," and plummets to his death.
King Arthur's assistant asks how he knows so much about swallows, to which the king smugly responds "well, you have to know these things when you're king, you know."
The point I wanted to make is that if you yourself want to be a "king" of sorts (someone who is a leader, and that others look up to), then it certainly helps to have a lot of random facts in your head. Even if it is no more than just having a pointless conversation with someone about whether or not a swallow could carry a coconut, it may prove to be beneficial in the future.
So, that is why I try to challenge myself to learn as much as I can about as many things as I can. I may never use all the random pointless facts floating around in my head, but if I ever step up to the bridge of death and the bridge-keeper asks me who played the guitar part on Michael Jackson's "Beat It", I'll answer that it is indeed Eddie Van Halen and go on my merry way.
