Learning to live

Mandela once said that “education is the most powerful weapon that can be used to change the world”. By looking at the modern world, I highly doubt this statement. Even though I use this statement day in day out to convince people that education is important, I myself doubt that the real value of education is still not uncovered. Learning is a part of education as many scholars believe. Learning is changing behavior and patterns of living. Renowned scholars have researched on experimental learning and concluded that it is an integral part of changing behavior. We all do experimental learning and it begins from our childhood. The best example for this is the behavior of children. A little kid falls down while trying to run after a dog, little thing starts crying because he hurts his leg. Next time when he runs after another animal he will recall back his past experience of hurting his leg and will try to avoid the pain by not running after it too fast. We identify and name this experimental learning. I started questioning myself the point in people gaining educational qualifications without learning how to live life. What has happened to experimental learning?

Learning to live differs from living to learn. How many of us actually live to learn. I am sure that most of us learn to live and we take life as it comes. We never consider the fact that there's a whole new world waiting to be found. A little after thought came to me after reading a novel today, written by a man who has heaps of educational qualifications and buckets of knowledge. It made me question myself, the values of education and how our mind reacts to certain situations when we are put to the sword. I was shattered about the bitter truth uncovered in the novel. It was expressed in a very dramatic way to capture the audience as well as to hide a little truth to the story and expose it as fiction. I did notice that the writer tried his level best to leave out emotional attachment but failed miserably in certain acts. His unconscious mind overtook his natural thinking. Mind is a strange thing, and more we try to control it the more it will act on its own. It is important to people to learn how to control the mind because of the very fact, that mind governs every action carried out by humans.

The bottom line of the story is to note that education is important to everyone and learning is the key to education since we need to adjust patterns of behaviors. Try to work on yourself, improve your skills and develop your thinking to serve better. Stop judging individuals and try to work on your own self. After all who are we to judge people, when we all have skeletons in our own closets.