An Ode to Learning

Before sending this blog page on her maiden voyage, the question arose as to what I can start readers off with. Like the open sea presents a ship crew with a realm that is both exciting and intimidating, I view this exercise with a level of mixed feelings. Luckily being lost here is not at all like being lost at sea. I simply have to uncover a sense of direction for this specific activity, my “compass” or “map” I suppose. This requires curiosity, effort, and of course, learning as I go.

We never really stop learning, do we?

Soaking up information is a given, not something we turn on or off as long as we are awake. Some things require more focus to learn of course, but I guess it’s easy to forget that, for example, noticing any change around us is an act of learning about our surroundings, updating our understanding about how things change and move in real time. Another example: even if you find that this post had no educational or entertainment value, you will have learned enough about it to form an opinion. That counts.

This idea of “learning” as a near-constant force is something I don’t want to take for granted. I’d imagine nobody is worse off from having awareness and attending to life and all its dynamic shifts in a present manner. What’s cool is that this ability is built in. It just needs input to work and I don’t think that’s necessarily lacking. The tricky part is finding input that means something to us. The more rewarding the better.

Obligation vs opportunity

If learning technically happens no matter what, then we get a say as to where we direct our attention for it. I’d encourage sitting on this potential and recognizing its importance as we spend much of our lives with a concept of learning as being something we have to do for school or to be productive in one way or another. Does this association take away from the magic of it? Maybe, maybe not. I would just like to posit that not all learning has to be tedious or a chore. It can be the vessel through which we can look forward to what comes next.

I believe that if there is ever a chance to give oneself credit, one should. Now you can say you learn all the time and you just can’t help yourself. How smart does that sound! If you want to take things a bit further, you have options. Again, just noticing things about your immediate surroundings and drawing conclusions, that’s learning and making use of what you absorb. Of course, there are all of these impressive people who teach themselves languages and complex skills, who I envy. These are people who have seemingly found a way to combine discipline with a goal to understand so that now they get some serious bragging rights. What a privilege it is to appreciate something so much that considerable time and energy go into engaging with it.

Flexible enrichment

I’d hate for the mere existence of naturally highly driven people to discourage from self-directed learning out of some notion that the exercise needs to have something major to show for it or some kind of “productive” application. I want to recognize the merit of driven people hitting incredible milestones while emphasizing that absorbing something for the love of it in a more low-key manner is also great. Constructive and enriching habits are something that have to be built up after all, which only happens over time. Those initial smaller engagements, the milder curiosity, I argue are special as they may lie on the path of profound emersion. And if you don’t go as far as learning a whole language or obtaining mastery over a skill, let us validate any takeaway that is just nice to know. This can be as simple as obtaining one fun fact at a time.

In other words, the buy-in for exercising curiosity and deliberately absorbing something neat need not be so oppressive. Perhaps this is the reframe that keeps one from hesitating to try. Start anywhere, and if you can, build off that. Can you sense that the exercise has intrinsic reward? Then that is a promising sign that further engaging can bring other little treasures. The good thing is that there is material everywhere that aids in pleasurable absorption of information from books on a myriad of topics to whatever is available on the internet. Learning for fun is delightful. Let us not focus on how it makes you “better” and instead see it as something that gives to your life anything positive.

Final thoughts on learning

Finally, I must point out that engaging in therapy is an act of learning. Granted, psychotherapy has more specific objectives but the emphasis on curiosity and directing your takeaways are valuable here as well. It is a process that allows you to learn about yourself and develop various perspectives on your circumstances. It is also a type of learning in which flexibility goes a long way. I believe that that the effort to promote a sense of wellness benefits from a type of exploration that is right for the individual, a process that strives to balance constructive challenge with validating one’s unique makeup for what “clicks.” Therapy is wonderfully dynamic in this way.

We’re all learners and I think that’s cool. The endless possibilities for self-directed learning is both exciting and intimidating. It can’t hurt to start small. Know as long as you’re encouraging any movement for the sake of exploration, then you increase the possibility for the effort to be the first step in curious emersion as a lifestyle. The little steps count and are pleasant in their own right. Try not to create a criterion for your enrichment that is too limiting and discouraging. Instead dare to just peek out into the unfamiliar. Maybe you’ll see something you like.