Learning to Live from Self and Others

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Learning to Live from Self and Others’ Experiences

By: R.B. Thohe Pou *

Learning to live is an art of life. The art of good life does not come automatically; we need to learn from self experiences and from others’ experiences. There are many things that we learn from our practical life.

There are also many things we learn from others’ experiences. All the knowledge and experiences that we acquire from the books, other media, advice from others etc are from others’ experiences.

The difference between learning from self-experience and others’ experience is that when we learn from self-experience, we are more confident and sure of what we experience. However learning from others’ experience cannot bring that much confident as we learn from our own experiences.

Learning is also an art of practice. If we have nothing to learn; we need to learn how to learn. Learning is the endless process and we need to learn everyday since it is insufficient to learn the whole system in our life time.

When a child is born, s/he commences to learn till the last breath. But how a child or adult learn is different from one person to another person. Some people have the learning attitude and absorptive in learning new things while others do not have much learning attitude.

Some are slow in learning while others are fast in picking up new things. A person may quick to learn new things but having the competence to learn fast without having the learning attitude is not better than a slow learner. When it comes to learning process, it is always better for a slow learner who learns persistently than a fast learner who ceases to learn in the course of learning.

Learning is the process that has no ending. We know that we need to learn every day. But unconsciously we presume that it is enough to learn or too old to learn more. But can we point out something which we don’t need to learn and continue to live happily?

Learning is the endless process and we need to realize this matter. Learning needs to commence from our childhood since learning will become our habit; not as a duty that is to be done forcefully.

The neuron system in our brain work faster when we start to consider, learn a copious of thing during the childhood and teenage. When something become our habit, it is difficult to eradicate, which is will be good in term of learning.

Learning is nothing but something that we come to know from studying, observation, listening, perceiving, which be intentionally or unintentionally. There are many things that we learn unintentionally, which may become useful or harmful to our life.

We learn many things from our parents, siblings, friends, others, books, media etc, which include the learning from others’ experiences. When we talk about learning from self-experience, it is only few things that we learn from self-experience. Our learning attitude is depending on our trust and believes on others.

When we trust some one and incorporate their advices and practice in our live, we come to experience what is all about. The advices of the old people are the advices from their self-experience and experience learnt from others.

This is the main reason the advices of the old people are precious and reliable as they had encountered ups and downs many times in their lives and learnt from it.

Many people think that they are too old to learn. But it is only their projection and perception on learning new thing. The fact is that there is no one who is too old to learn. There are many people who are doing research after their retirement from the job; there are also many who do graduation or post graduation and other courses after the menopause.

There is not a single person who does not need to learn. Practically an old age person may no go to school and learn again but definitely s/he also need to learn to live a better in old age. Once a person ceases to learn the art of life; s/he becomes like a paralytic person. However even a paralytic person also needs to learn how to talk and order politely for his/her food, which involve learning.

Self-experience comes learning from experiencing from his/her own failure and success in life. God gives us good life but many of us do not know the art of living. The art of living is also come not only doing self-experiencing learning or from others’ experience but having positive thoughts to live better life.

One of the important aspects of learning the art of life is looking beyond the present activities, work, studies or anything that engage at present. Ponder beyond the present thought or pondering. Pause sometime what you are thinking and recall back and analyze what you are pondering on. When we pause and reflect on again with different perspective, we receive new idea or take a better decision.

Today, the competition is very high in every field. The “Survival of the fittest” is indeed now come to our society. A child in First Standard starts to compete with other Classmates.

Today both the students and parents are stressful due to stiff competition; stresses are there in every aspect from learning in school to working place. But when we learn the art of life to live will solve the stressful problems.

When we want to live a better life – we need to learn to live from our self-experience and from others’ experience. Some of the important aspects involves in learning are like accepting the advice, right thinking, observation and doing practical work.

When we contemplate and involve in practical work, it helps us to live a better life. We learn and have self-experience and the best thing to learn is to experience from the thing experienced by others.

Crossposted at Thohe Pou blog

* R.B. Thohe Pou contributes regularly to e-pao.net . The writer can be contacted at thohepou(at)rediffmail(dot)com . This article was webcasted on May 17th, 2007

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