Why am I so Fascinated by Sparkling Water?

Why am I so intrigued by sparkling water? I've asked myself the same thing, and I think that I figured out the answer. There was an education philosopher and theorist at Simon Fraser University named Kieran Egan who was an advocate for an approach to education called Learning in Depth. The idea was that you would give a single word to a child and invite that child to explore all aspects of that word over the next ten to twelve years. A child might get a word like "cats" and then explore all things cats for a decade: the biology of cats, the psychology of cats, cats depicted in art, cats referenced in music, cats in literature, myths and legends of cats. Over time, that student would experience a true depth of learning, perhaps becoming one of the more knowledgeable people in the world on the single but expansive topic of cats. What might seem a narrow topic spans dozens of disciplines and fields of study, across millennia, and around the globe. I think the reason that I gravitated toward that philosophy of education is because it is how I think and live. Every few years I pick a word or topic and delve into it in the same way. I learn things I never expected. It is like a treasure hunt of ideas, and the treasures just keep emerging. In the end, I think that is what my sparkling water quest is about. Is it about water? Yes, but it is also about the joy of deep, lasting, stubborn learning about one topic that eventually connects to so much more than we ever expected.