The Importance of Learning and Growing

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by Jayaram V

Always find opportunities to learn something or practice some skills. You never know when they may come to your help. Years ago, when I completed my post graduation, I had a few months of free time. I used it to complete a diploma course in journalism and learn typing. At that time, I was not even planning for any career in writing or journalism. I just did it instead of wasting my time, watching movies or going around with friends. I thought it would help me organize my thoughts and discipline my mind.

It did, besides helping me improve my communication and expression. Later, when I had time again for a few weeks, I started memorizing difficult English words and understand their meaning and usage. Learning and acquiring knowledge are the best way to improve your chances of success. Around that time I also dabbled with English literature, economics, sociology, history, psychology, and Upanishads. I bought books and read them without any particular aim but to improve my overall knowledge and understanding and become a better person. I did it when I was very young. It laid a strong foundation for my future. It helped not only succeed in my career at an early age, but also understand people and deal with them.

As my knowledge grew, I began noticing how people would rationalize their behavior or pass judgments about others and events without knowing much about them. They took sides merely because someone said so or identified with causes according to their emotions and prejudices rather than their knowledge, analysis, and understanding. When a large number of people do it, they bring their limited awareness into their decisions making and wrongly chose their leaders, priorities and preferences, which in turn will affect their lives and destinies. Electing two or three weak leaders in succession is sufficient to ruin a nation and its future for a long time. Unfortunately, it keeps happening almost like a predictable pattern in many countries in the world as a case of self-destructive behavior.

Remember this. If you are young, it is the right time to focus upon improving your knowledge, before you want to earn wealth. It is so important because knowledge, not wealth, makes you wiser and a better human being. Knowledge can make you wealthy, but wealth cannot make you knowledgeable unless you use it wisely to learn and increase your knowledge.

Therefore, learn for knowledge sake and learn as much as you can on a variety of subjects. Specialized knowledge helps you in the early stages of your career, but as you climb the hierarchy of positions in any field or organization, you will need soft skills, people skills, general knowledge, and a broader awareness to foresee, forecast and deal with a variety of problems.

The more you know, the greater will be your ability to adapt to situations and deal with difficult problems. It keeps your mind open and receptive. I also noticed that if you become acquainted with a variety of subjects, you will see hidden connections and patterns, which are not ordinarily visible or perceptible. You are what you think. When you are in a learning mode, you become more observant, sensitive and understanding. With knowledge arises deeper awareness and when you have it, you become more intuitive.

In today's fast growing world, there is even a greater need to learn. It is not necessary that you should go to college or join a course or workshop. You should do it when you are young and pursuing your education. You may do it later also, if it is going to help you further your career or profession. However, your learning should not be confined to classrooms or academic studies. Just have fun in learning, observing, innovating, and improving your knowledge, awareness, reasoning, skills. Always see whether there are better ways to do the tasks, and whether there is anything that you want to improve about yourself.