Many of us reach a point or age in life where we fill we have come to know it all, or at the least all we need to know. This can leave many of us feeling like we’re done with academics, school, and learning in general.
But the truth is, learning should be a lifelong process. Healthy humans are always in a state of learning. They see what’s around them and want to learn more, understand more, and see why everything is the way it is.
This doesn’t mean you need to manufacture a desire to start reading textbooks on calculus in order to see what life is about. It’s simply an encouragement to start to take an interest in the world around you. Investigate, probe, and learn more about things that catch your interest, and your passion for learning will start to grow on its own before long.
So here is your call to action: Never stop learning. How do we do this? By becoming more aware.
If a person can truly foster the ability to pay attention to everything around them, they develop the ability to break free from the self-centered mindset that all humans naturally slip into when we’re not paying attention. Just to clarify, this isn’t a call not to pay attention to your own thoughts and needs. They’re important too. In fact, the Dalai Lama said, “One must be compassionate to one’s self before external compassion can have any effect.”
Whether it’s ourselves at first or others afterward, truly developing the ability to be aware of and empathize with the life that goes on in and around us is a critical part of understanding just why we’re all alive in the first place and something we can learn through each moment of our days.
Peace and Love, Jim
