A Story A Day Keeps COVID Away – 07/28/20: Live and Learn
“Live and learn.” In all likelihood, you’ve heard that phrase or some variation of it before. “Learn something new every day.” “Learning doesn’t stop when school ends.” And such things like that. And it’s true, of course; with enough time, something will happen to you that leads to you learning something new, whether it be about yourself or the world around you.
But notice I said something will happen to you. Learning by experience means learning through your experience, something that is often passive. Knowledge given, not gained. And even when knowledge is sought, it is often knowledge comfortably within reach of what you already know.
Something I love to do is to seek out different experiences. Not in the sense of looking for new things to personally experience (though that is a worthwhile endeavor), but looking for the experiences of people different from me. Different cultures, orientations, genders, ranging from those with backgrounds closely mirroring mine, to those who are so far removed from me that I would have never come into contact with their point of view had it not been for the miracle of the information age. Learning from their experiences creates a perpetual recontextualization of the world I know, with a depth and breadth that I would never be able to gain from my perspective alone.
A history class, even a well-crafted one, will never cover the entire scope of the human condition. It is a sad truth that many such classes are tailored to fit one very specific and often highly romanticized ideal of human experience. Learning of new experiences cannot be limited to just social studies, but must be active searching for something beyond your perspective. It does not have to be wildly outside of it; in fact, it is best to start with an area of personal interest. New points of view will lead to other angles and other areas of intrigue and mystery.
There is the unfortunate inevitability that such broadening will lead to the discovery of just how deeply broken the world is. Dig deep enough and the worst of human history will rear its ugly head. Realizing the extent of that evil is depressing, sobering, and overwhelming – and it is reexperienced with every new perspective that you find, as it brings with it a new way in which humanity has decided to ostracize an innocent part of itself. But this cannot serve as a deterrent. Knowledge is power, and the cost that it comes with learning it is worth knowing better than to trust only that which you have experienced yourself.
To live is to learn. That much will always be true. But to learn only from that which you live is to engender a narrow, biased perspective that wilts in comparison to the spectrum of humanity. So long as you ensure that your knowledge is accurate, expanding that perception can only ever be beneficial. Live and learn – and learn from lives.
