Two focuses of my blog are General Education and Health/Wellness. Education is not just something to get a degree or a diploma. The benefits to continuing to learn are multi-fold. The following contributed post is entitled, Some Reasons To Stay Interested In Learning Throughout Your Life.
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For many people, the idea of “education” is tightly interwoven with the school system, and often comes attached to negative memories and associations as a result.
Unfortunately, this can contribute to a belief that is not necessary – or important – to actively pursue learning throughout life, and many of us end up so caught up in the highs, lows and concerns of everyday life, that trying to specifically educate ourselves about different topics, in-depth, can seem outright impractical.
Here are just a few reasons to stay interested in learning throughout your life, and to keep looking for ways to expand your horizons and deepen your level of insight into different subjects.
Because the world is rich and deep, and learning more about it can expand your sense of wonder
First things first: there’s a big, fascinating, and rich world out there, that’s full of history and stories that it will often be impossible to imagine given a cursory glance.
Learning more about different topics, even about things like the history of capes, can really help to deepen your sense of wonder and appreciation for the dynamic and intricate nature of the world, and of life more generally.
If you only encounter the world at large in a passing manner, and see it on a surface level, there’s a lot of great and fascinating stuff that you are missing out on.
In some sense, maintaining an active sense of interest and wonder is the opposite of being jaded or disillusioned.
Because constantly learning helps to keep you sharp as you age
In the fascinating book “The Brain That Changes Itself,” the psychologist Norman Doidge shares many remarkable examples of people rebuilding their lives after brain injuries, by engaging in activities that help to promote neuronal growth and healing that was previously thought impossible.
One of the things that he investigates is the way in which maintaining active hobbies, and regularly exploring and becoming invested in new topics as we age, appears to help to protect the brain and keep us sharp.
Maintaining a lifelong interest in learning not only makes life more interesting, but can also make you more mentally agile, effective, healthy, and adept as time goes on.
Because often, knowledge is power
We all know the old saying that “knowledge is power,” and the fact of the matter is that there is a lot of truth to that statement.
The more broadly we educate ourselves, and the greater number of different subjects we actively engage with, the more effective we are likely to be across a range of different dimensions.
In his book “Range,” the writer David Epstein makes a compelling case that success in life is more often associated with having a breadth of experience and insight, than it is with being hyper-specialised in one particular domain.
Maintaining an interest in learning can help to promote insight, and can make you more effective in various professional and personal contexts, while also helping you to be and remain well-rounded in general.
