Learning to Smile
Our ability to learn changed as we aged. The actual bulk of quick learning occurs from birth to kindergarten and you can see why. We have to learn how to do just about everything, even smile. But babies are up to the task and don’t stress over not learning their lessons fast enough. They leave that to the adults staring at them. There is literally no baby that ever talked about the stress about not being able to figure stuff out. They just do it. And since they don’t have a textbook with an enclosed timeline on when everything is due, they work at their own pace. Genius.
Confusion Learning
Those first few worry free years must be a delight and I wish I could remember more about how I maintained my Zen status. Maybe that has something to do with how much new knowledge is acquired early in life. Just to know that someone will come and feed you or change you or play with you if you cry loudly enough is a tactic I have not thought about using as an adult. But it works well from birth until some unknown day when we don’t get an immediate response and start to question our process. The confusion prompts some doubt in us. It’s the end of the easy learning stage and the start of the next one.
Traditional Learning
In order to decrease chaos in schools, teachers keep a rather dogmatic approach to learning. Since it is difficult to use an individual learning technique for each student and there is a lot to cover before those end of the year tests, the shortest route to success is used. We might just focus on one subject at a time or memorize answers to questions or learn the one answer we are given to a problem. This may save time but it may also not work for everyone the same. Some thinkers need more creativity and the gateway to being open to the existence of the ideas of others closes up. The practice of identifying multiple right answers to a question gets lost because time is clicking away.
Better late than Never
We are handed opportunities in life to work around this as adults. If we can listen closely to someone with whom we disagree, we can examine alternate thoughts in the wild. It should be fascinating to us that since we all started out as baby-learners, we diverged somewhere along the line. These are chances to study how this whole human experience is different for all of us. We can even be curious about our own beliefs and wonder if they might be a little janky. It is never too late to learn and it is never too late to observe how we think the stuff we do. The fact that there is unique thought available to millions of us should reveal that we are not all the same, we are crusty individuals at times and it is downright amazing that every one of our brains is working on its own. It’s not too late to check out every “now” thought we have and decide if it needs to go back to school.
Are you open to the option of lifelong learning enough to pursue it? Can you unlearn some untruths? Are you ready to transform your own thoughts?
