LEARNING TO LEARN

 FROM SAMPATH’S DESK:

   

 

LEARNING TO LEARN

  

At the outset, let us not confine learning to the four walls of a classroom with a teacher teaching, a lecturer/professor lecturing, and the students/participants listening, understanding, and grasping the discourse. Actually, it goes further beyond. Everything or everyone around us leaves one lesson or another to be learnt - by looking, observing, touching, interacting, etc. even without mincing words. 

Life is a continuous process of learning from womb to tomb. Needless to say, after birth, a child starts learning - little by little and step by step. The journey continues unceasingly. Knowledge and wisdom lie in understanding, retaining, remembering, recalling, implementing, and practicing what all you learned as meaningfully and gainfully as you could and benefit therefrom - to move from perception to preparation with prudence and persistence, proceeding in the direction of pertinent presentation to perfection! And, if you opt to serve others also in the process with your knowledge inputs, it is ideal and welcome! Life is a succession of lessons - good and/or bad - which must be learnt to live your life altruistically. A community without learned men is a hamlet of mountaineers. And, to teach is to learn twice over.

 

Failure is an inevitable part of even a well-designed schedule, scheme, or system; it sometimes happens despite whatever best efforts you put in. Never mind! Learn to challenge the failure. What lessons are there to learn from the failure(s) along with how to recover is the crux of the matter, called ‘bouncing back.’

 

Remember the golden saying ‘Learn from yesterday, live in today, and hope and prepare for tomorrow.’ The shrewd and intelligent would never fail to realize that one must learn from past failures and mistakes, but not much is there to learn from past successe(s). Sometimes, a failure makes one well prepared and equipped than even a success.

 

Learn something new every day to enjoy ceaseless and unremitting growth. Actively learn something in your field, be alive to things on the anvil before they become obvious, be aware of and attune to trendy ground reality, adopt apt new norms and make best efforts crucial for your growth.

Forget the past; it is dead and gone. Live in the present, and prepare and plan for the future because it is full of potentials, possibilities, and prospects to be tactfully identified by you. A journey from innocence to knowledge, unknown to known, impossibility to possibility, chaos to order, anarchy to peace, etc. may be a hard one to grapple with initially, but you should clear the hurdles, pits and falls, thorns, blockades, etc. en route and surge ahead toward the destination. Nothing else will be so challenging and interesting than this.

 

Tamil Saint Poetess AVVAYAR  would insist, “Whatever you have learnt is a drop, the unlearnt is an ocean” (கற்றது கைம்மண் அளவு, கல்லாதது உலகளவு).

Confucius had this to say, “Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.”

 

Peace education gives you tools and lessons to understand that our lives are enriched when we learn to celebrate, not just tolerate diversities. And, learning more and more is one of the fastest ways to build self-confidence and assertiveness.

 

A Research group asked one set of students to write down what they learned in a classroom and asked another set of students to type it out as a note. When the two sets of students were questioned separately, the researchers found that the information didn’t exactly ‘stick’ in the minds of those who made a typed presentation, while the other group who handwrote it had a better understanding of what was taught to them. Yes, when it comes to learning, the pen is mightier than the keyboard. For, maybe, typing being a blind system concentration of those in the second group must have been fully focussed on typing and finishing their note (thinking that typing is only their job) which could have distracted and reduced their absorption and assimilation process.

To ease your tension, look at the world through a child’s eyes and see the difference yourself.

 

Even the richest man is poor if he is without love in his heart. Loving others is caring, sharing, bearing, working, and changing, of course, together. Learn to love and be kind to everyone and everything. Mark Twain said, “Love/kindness is magical. It is a language the deaf can hear, a song the crippled ones can dance to, and a sunrise/sunset the blind can see.”

 

Life is like a song. Which tunes you are going to sing in is what matters?

 

Don’t just throw out a vice; rather, replace it with a good virtue.

 

Always express appreciation first before discussing a problem or bringing up a complaint. That is the way to convince others that you are fair, reasonable, and practical in your approach.

 

The whole world and all living beings including the wealth therein are creations of God. Remember, there is always, always something we can be thankful for.

 

Learn right things from right people for right causes and march ahead toward right goal-post(s) by treading the right path.

 

Put on the glasses of optimism and you will see a world of potential; contrarily, if you see through a tainted glass, the future will only be haze beset with pessimism.

 

Troubles, like washing machines, twist and knock us around, but at the end, we come out stain-free, brighter and better.  Yes, as long as you can carry on one more moment, you will never be defeated.

 

There should always be something good in every situation; all you have to do is look for it, and take advantage and solace in the same.

 

It is better to complete a small project rather than take up a bigger one and abandon it midstream and/or half-done!

 

 

(R.SAMPATH)

18/10/2023