Everyone makes a choice:
- Commit to continuous learning to better themselves and the world.
- Make little or no effort to learn and trust the world to tell you what to think and know.
- Pretend you know everything and have nothing else to learn.
Option one comes with the realization that learning doesn’t stop when you graduate for high school or college. You’ve only scratched the surface. Also, as an adult you realize learning is a whole different experience outside of the structure of schools. Exploration, discovery, enlightenment. The kind of things that brought you wonder as a child, then snuffed out by the system, return in full force.
Option two comes when you succumb to an industrial education system that often teaches you not to question. Or if they do, someday they will say they didn’t mean it. They also want you to figure out your path by graduation. Then, they tell you, you’re stuck there forever. Don’t keep searching for your purpose. Trust us.
Option three is when you allow yourself to be drawn into a cult-like mindset. Often this is an extension of option two where you were encouraged not to question and test what you are told. When one falls into this abyss, they are used by others for their own purposes. Politicians love people like this.
This is all a long way of stating the best way to learn is to read. Commit to learning, studying, exploring. This isn’t the dull learning you may have experienced in school. However, you will face many far more important tests in life. You must be prepared. You will also learn you have an innate, critical responsibility to mentoring the younger generations.
I feel sorry for people who say “I don’t read.” “I don’t have time” they say as they binge-tv watch. They think the carefully crafted and controlled headlines and news constitute learning. They know their life feels unfulfilled, but make no effort to change. Or they look at the world and its problems and just hope for the best.
Don’t be that person.
Here’s a selection of some of the books I read in 2023. A wide array of topics sure to challenge, inform, and inspire.
Will you commit in 2024 to leaving the Matrix? Will you choose to exit The Brave New World?
Start your own path to learning. It will be exciting and disturbing. One thing it won’t be is regrettable.
Darrick Dean 