Too much learning is good, but…

Particularly in the West, we may take decades engaged in learning in schools and other institutions, besides what we learn at home, on the streets or temples. And it is not a bad thing.

In fact, learning as a desire, habit or hobby should be part of our personality, specially in our fast-changing world. Even to buy a new cell phone or going to a supermarket after a few months is a challenge.

The reason is that with every change, we need to adapt and to do that in a successful way, there is no alternative to learning. Well, maybe suffering…

And this is the age of changes, they are everywhere for every reason. So, it should be the Age of Learning too.

Why is not so? Why do we see more and more illiterate people in various areas of work or society? There are a few reasons for that.

The first one is to not follow changes. As the learning curve can be quite steep, it may be a wise decision, but not always practical, due to professional or personal commitments. It is the case of many parents having to learn the lingo of social media, so they can help their kids navigate in this new world, even though they may not want to do.

The second reason is that the learning curve is too hard for some people because of their age... There is a paradigm that connects age and change, which means many people just not even try to learn something because they are old. This means they will have difficult to use transportation, to withdraw some money and even to travel. This is not true and there are plenty of examples of people who have challenged these misconceptions. True, it may be hard for some people, but it is possible with some effort.

Another reason is that there is no time to catch up. It happens a lot for those who work in a fast-paced industry, as things can change brusquely and there is no time to really try and grasp what is going on. However, I do remember a former CEO who decided to take a course on accounting after his company suffered a fraud by their accountant. Discernment will guide those people to dedicate their time in learning what is really important, otherwise leadership will help to have the right people surrounding them.

Don’t think you cannot learn. You can, just understand how. And keep on learning…