Spot on TSandM! I know exactly what you're talking about. I detest it when I encounter one of those invincible "oh that's nothing! I've been diving for 50 years and starfish well...there are better things to see" kind of divers in any dive group. It's the childlike awe and amazement at the simple things that makes teaching worth every hard earned cent and minute I've paid into my own training and experience over the past few years. When that proverbial light bulb lights up above a diver's head it's as good as gold to witness and it makes me feel humble knowing that whilst I might have seen a starfish before, I've never seen it exactly as it is right there and then at that very moment. We know so frighteningly little about the ocean and it's bounty that we'd be extremely arrogant to think that we somehow really know anything besides perhaps some of the basics. Diving is about learning, whether it's learning to improve your own skills and being a quiet mentor through example or learning through being the student of a mentor. We're all students and newbies in the end, some of us just have been newbies for longer than othersTSandM:
Which brings me to the newbie rant: I'm not going to say much except that the day you consider yourself a perfect diver is the day you are entitled to stop considering yourself a newbie. I've quoted Galileo before here on the board and I will do it again: "I've never met a man[/woman] so ignorant that I couldn't learn from him[/her]." Think about that. It's an awesome attitude.
