Inadvertently, we are not learning every day.
Be curious, be informed, and be wonderful.
The Majority of us are satisfied with what we know, and we never realise that life is teaching us new things at home, in the office, in groups, sitting, or moving every day, every hour. The level of knowledge of such people is comparable to a jar full of water, where no more water can be added without taking out some water from the jar.
There are people who stop broadening their horizons of learning after getting a degree with a packed syllabus. When they find that the formulas and theories of geometry and trigonometry are not directly applicable to addressing family, social, or organisational issues, they feel emptiness. They don’t know how to connect the many dots between their knowledge and its application.
Whatever we learn up to the age of 14 or so is the foundation for developing our models of further learning as per our preferences. Foundations can’t serve as pillars or other parts of structures in the process of acquiring knowledge and insights.
When we enter real-life situations, we realise that things are entirely different, and only sincere people start elevating themselves to cope with the mostly clueless circumstances.
Practically everyone wants to belong and be noticed. On the other hand, nobody is eager to notice us if we are not useful to them, directly or indirectly.
Then what is the way out?
First, we should know that our brain has 100 billion neurons, and their connections are estimated to be trillions. In simple terms, we can say that the power of our mind is limitless. It is our personal asset and completely in our possession. We are free to use it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Note that the mind cannot be put to rest even for a fraction of a second.
Second, we may learn wherever we are, whatever we are, irrespective of age, gender, class, occupation, and belief systems. We need only one thing. That is curiosity to learn.
Third, the strongest bottlenecks in our journey of learning are various specified or unspecified fears, including failures. Let them happen. We learn more in adverse conditions than in the smooth sailing of our affairs.
Fourth, we are weak at the mechanism of unlearning. We keep adding "bad collections" in our minds since early childhood, as a normal phenomenon. They need to be cleansed gradually as we develop our own designs to do so. The unlearning of bad stuff does more harm than good in our value addition.
Fifth, we are easily influenced by outside forces in our personal, professional, and social lives. We give more weight to their views without filtering them. This practise makes even easy situations topsy-turvy. Self-learning plays an important role in clearing up many hazy concepts in our day-to-day activities.
Seventh, learning is not difficult, as we assume well before beginning even a small skill. Just start and go ahead.
Eighth, all kinds of learning are not to be weighed against earning money. Money is a great facilitator of smoothness in lives, but it is not a panacea for all that a human life needs.
In short, let our learning be placed on the same scale as eating, sleeping, doing allotted work, meeting people, and other chores. We have to learn something new every day.
Leaning may be unrelated to our main occupation, but let the information flow to our minds, segregate it, and retain what seems useful and relevant while washing out others.
Last line: Only continuous learning can keep us useful in one form or another without worrying about being discarded.