Learning

Whether it’s your behaviour or the way you think, when we actually learn something it changes us forever. There are many things that we have stored in our heads as memories that we have not actually learned. For example, all the clues, tips and tricks to being infinitely happy are all around us and we see or hear them almost every day – yet many people are still unhappy.

To learn something means to make it a part of you; to understand it from every viewpoint; on the surface and deep within as well. When you’re learning to ride a bike, it’s too easy for somebody to say ‘balance your weight, pedal, sit, steer, brake’. The best cyclist in the world could describe it to you in a million ways and you could remember everything about it, but until you've actually ridden a bike, felt the balance, used your depth perception to judge distances, felt how sensitive the brakes and steering are that you learn how to ride a bike. And once you've ridden one and truly learned it, you are now changed forever; there is knowledge and ability in you that wasn't before. And this isn't limited to riding a bike because you've now learned balance, sensitivity, judgment of distance, rules of the road, thinking under pressure (speed), etc. that you can now use towards other aspects in life.

Also with learning, there is an order. You can’t learn to multiply if you haven’t learned addition; you can’t learn to run if you haven’t learned to walk. To learn something as (surprisingly) complex as freedom, happiness, love or, unsurprisingly, enlightenment, requires many stages and building blocks before they can be attained.

So to pass through the stages of learning to reach freedom, love, happiness or enlightenment, just like riding a bike, requires experience in each stage. I could tell you that to reach happiness you can reduce your ego, expect nothing and give everything, be honest with yourself and others, understand why things happen so they no longer affect you negatively, appreciate everything in life, think of the ‘bad’ as challenges or learning lessons, constantly work towards improving yourself, find value in things other than the material, find your motivations and maintain goals, learn freedom, learn love, and learn forgiveness for yourself and others. However, reading these lines will get you no closer to happiness than ice cream will on a hot day. Sure it gives you a good feeling but it won’t stick with you even if you remember the lines. Every one of those examples requires changing who you are. Just honesty alone is something that many people never learn – I don’t only mean abstaining from blatant hurtful lying but also the smallest lies that we tell ourselves or others to appease them. But I’ll go into lying more in another post.

So, we’re left at the point of knowing that to learn many lessons in life, requires experience and also following the order of things. The purpose of me writing this note is to remind us to be patient; to not get upset when we can’t learn calculus when we haven’t learned addition yet; to not get upset when we aren't overall happy people when we haven’t even learned honesty yet. The idea is to keep striving to learn anything and everything and eventually things will fall into place.