The answer is yes.
An easy yes.
I have been learning my entire life, although I am not entirely sure what the question means by “learning.”
Does it mean school?
Books?
Experience?
Mistakes?
Because if mistakes count, I may be one of the most educated people alive.
As a boy, I loved books.
I was always reading something. Anything I could get my hands on.
Most of it was science fiction and fantasy, which meant I knew a great deal about dragons, distant planets, magical weapons, alien civilizations, and saving the universe.
This knowledge has been surprisingly useless during tax season.
Still, I was learning.
Books taught me that there were worlds beyond the one I could see. They introduced me to strange places, impossible creatures, difficult choices, and people who were usually expected to save everyone despite having almost no adult supervision.
At the time, I did not think of reading as education.
I thought I was escaping.
But sometimes escaping into a book is how we return to the world with a better understanding of it.
Stories taught me about courage.
Friendship.
Power.
Fear.
Sacrifice.
They also taught me that accepting mysterious jewelry from strangers is usually a bad idea.
Then came my teenage years, when much of my education moved from books to horror movies.
I watched far too many of them.
Still, they taught me several practical lessons.
If you are camping and someone suddenly goes missing, leave.
If you hear strange noises in the woods, leave faster.
Do not investigate.
Do not split up.
Do not say, “I’ll be right back.”
And under no circumstances should you stop in the nearby town to explain what happened.
The townspeople already know.
They have always known.
They will stare at you silently from the diner while someone behind the counter slowly wipes the same glass.
Just get in your car and go.
If the car will not start, then unfortunately, the movie has already decided your future.
The most important thing I learned, however, was that the more you know, the more you realize how much you do not know.
This was unfortunate news for me.
I had a rather inflated opinion of myself when I was younger.
I was confident.
Very confident.
The kind of confident that can only exist when a person has not yet encountered enough information to become confused.
I thought I knew almost everything.
Not because I had learned everything, of course.
I simply had not yet discovered how much everything included.
Then I kept reading.
I kept watching.
I kept listening.
I kept living.
And slowly, the world became larger.
Every answer introduced another question.
Every subject revealed ten more subjects I had never considered.
Every person knew something I did not.
This was humbling.
Annoying, but humbling.
I look back at that cocky boy now and laugh.
Not because he was foolish.
At least not entirely.
He was simply standing at the edge of a very large ocean, holding a cup of water, convinced he had discovered the sea.
There is something beautiful about that kind of confidence.
There is also something dangerous about it.
The older I become, the more I understand that learning is not about reaching a place where no one can correct you.
It is about listening to people whose experiences are different from your own.
It is changing your mind when new information gives you a good reason to do so.
That last one can be difficult.
People become attached to their opinions.
Sometimes we carry an opinion for so long that it begins to feel like a family member.
Not necessarily a family member we like.
But one we feel obligated to defend at gatherings.
Lifelong learning requires us to let some of those old opinions go.
It requires curiosity.
Humility.
And the willingness to accept that the younger version of ourselves occasionally had no idea what he was talking about.
I still love books.
I still love discovering something new.
I still enjoy the feeling of reading a sentence that makes me stop and reconsider something I thought I understood.
But I no longer think learning is a journey toward knowing everything.
That sounds exhausting.
Learning is simply remaining teachable.
It is keeping the windows open.
It is allowing new ideas to enter, while occasionally asking the old ones to gather their things and leave.
The older I get, the less interested I am in being the smartest person in the room.
Mostly because the smartest person in the room usually knows enough not to announce it.
I would rather stay curious.
I would rather keep reading.
I would rather keep learning.
And somewhere inside me, that boy is still holding a science-fiction book, ready to travel to another world.
The teenager is probably still watching a horror movie and yelling at the screen, “Do not go into the woods.”
They are both still confident.
Still curious.
Still slightly convinced they can save the universe.
The difference is that now they understand two important things:
Read the instructions first.
And if the woods start making strange noises, leave.
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Resources for Hard Times
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