Lifelong Learning

A guest post from Peter Raymant

Exploring Life and Literature

Dear friends,

During the months of December and January, Beyond the Bookshelf will explore the idea of Lifelong Learning. This topic is near and dear to my heart and is intimately tied to my love of literature. However, I wanted to hear from others what their perspectives were on the topic. Back in September, I put out a call for guest submissions on the topic. The response was overwhelming and I am excited to host the first of those guest essays today.

Peter Raymant

is a writer, geologist, creator, an avid reader of books and news, who is always curious about what goes on in the world around us. He is retired but still occasionally works in the field of geology which he loves. His passion is using high tech software to make models of the subsurface, an aspect of the field he became an expert in after his days running around in deserts and jungles. Hailing originally from Britain, his career took him all over the world and these days he has settled down in The Netherlands with his wife Maggie where they enjoy cycling, coffee, and cheese. Please enjoy Peter’s essay below.

When I look back on my life, a long one to date thankfully, I often think of it as a learning experience that still continues, even today. I’ve been fortunate enough to live and work in some very different countries around the world, and in order to survive, I have had to learn to adapt and thrive in different situations. You could say that the habit of learning is so deeply embedded in me that I cannot stop. Is that good or even normal for most of us? And, if what we might call lifelong learning is a good thing, how do we do it if it’s not normal for us?

If we think about learning, most of us automatically think about school, university, or some other formal learning process. However, learning is much broader. Right from birth, we start learning, beginning with the basics, and, as we grow up, steadily learn more skills and abilities to help us cope with life. Developing relationships within our families and others outside of our family is how we learn to be a part of wider human society. Our experiences, and, hopefully, guidance from our parents, are just as important as our formal learning at school.

For many of us, once we reach adulthood and perhaps have a life partner and a steady occupation or role in life, we may feel that the learning has finished and there’s not much more to be usefully learnt. But is that right? Is it even good? As human beings, we are driven to try to stabilise our living conditions so that we can feel safe. But life is not like that; we are often confronted with having to make changes, some big, some small. 

An ancient Greek thinker, Heraclitus, once said ‘the only constant in life is change’. He didn’t say it exactly like that, but that is the essence of what he meant. If that is true, then life for us all is a constant battle to achieve stability while adapting to changed circumstances. It is stressful, often painful. 

Fortunately, as human beings, we all have the basic equipment to adapt to change and cope with the stress it creates—the ability to learn. 

Our capacity to continue learning and adapting is what sets us apart from other animals. Most animals are highly adapted to live in one specific environment and cannot exist elsewhere. For example, polar bears cannot thrive in a desert.

Human beings, however, can learn to adapt by wearing the right clothes or building environments that can be used to survive, for example. We can learn constantly. By continuous, or lifelong, learning, we can react to change positively and equip ourselves to flourish in new environments, whether that is within our personal relationships or in the wider world of work and life.

Just because we can do it doesn't mean that many of us do. Or, at least not with the big changes that are sometimes required. We adapt readily to many small changes in our lives, like new ways of paying for things or the way we dress or shop. 

Bigger, more drastic changes often meet resistance because people are not open to learning to do things completely differently, or the change is simply too big for them to contemplate. And it’s often painful because we don’t like being pushed out of our comfort zone. Unfortunately for us, the pace of change is increasing rapidly. 

A good example of drastic change is how our ways of working during the recent pandemic, such as home working for many, became totally different.

Working from home coupled with flexible working hours has been enormously successful in enabling people with responsibilities outside work, like caring for children or disabled relatives, to work effectively with reduced stress. Many families, especially in Europe, continue to benefit from the move to flexible working. They’ve successfully learnt and adapted and will likely continue to do so.

Yet there are those who complain about having to change, or, put another way, they are unwilling to learn new skills to adapt. 

We often call those who resist changing or learning to adapt ‘dinosaurs’, in reference to the otherwise highly successful dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago but were rapidly extinct when they failed to adapt to a radically changed environment. Whether these modern day ‘dinosaurs’ will die out remains to be seen!

It is much healthier for us, as human beings, to be positive about change and continue to learn new things. This is not only the case when we are forced to confront major change by losing our job or some other significant event. We can, and should, develop the habit of learning throughout our lives, because this keeps our minds healthy as we age and also makes us more useful members of our families and society. And, when we are finished with formal learning at school or university, we can choose to learn what we enjoy instead of having to wade through boring textbooks and courses as we did at school. 

Lifelong learning might be a good idea, but how does it work? Well, there is no particular formula since we, as human beings, are all different. We all have different learning styles, or at least that’s what the psychologists tell us. And to some extent, I know from my own personal experience that they’re right. Some of us learn best by memorising large amounts of data; others, like me, have to learn by understanding first. Fortunately, learning style has its biggest impact in formal learning and is less of a problem in the every day learning we need to engage in.

Let’s think about some things that we can do to make sure we are learning as our lives progress.

There is one basic requirement for learning. We need to be open minded and receptive to new, or different, ways of thinking and doing things. This is not easy; the older we get, the more set in our ways we become. That’s just human nature, forming habits that make us feel secure and avoiding doing things differently. 

Being open minded needs to be practiced. Instead of jumping to conclusions, get into the habit of pausing to think and understand when faced with something different; it may be good rather than bad.

Along with the open mind, we need to be constantly curious. Not to excess, where we intrude into other people’s space and ask them what they’re doing, but just finding satisfaction in understanding why things are like they are. 

Look around; make sure that we are really seeing and not just looking. Seeing is one way that we learn. What’s the difference between looking and seeing? A great deal! Our brain and our eyes work together to create what we think we see. A great deal of data from our eyes is regularly categorised by our brains as normal, so that we don’t really register it but are just aware of it. This is what we can call looking. 

To really see something, we need to make the perception process pause and really understand what we’re looking at. The same can be said about listening, really listening, to what others say.

Then there are activities that help us to learn. The simple, everyday ones, like reading, for example. Every book we read teaches us something, even if that something is how bad some writing can be! We don’t have to read long, technical monologues to learn, although of course that may be necessary sometimes. Every well researched, well written, thoughtful fiction book, story, or article can teach us many things about the world around us and ourselves. If we read a lot, as I do, we learn constantly and keep our brains active. 

Books are, or can be, our superpower and also our refuge when times get tough. The right books help us to understand that we are not alone in many of our difficult experiences; others have been there before and survived.

Being a bookworm isn’t enough, though, good as it may be. We need physical stimulus as well. Getting outside, doing sports, exploring other countries, and meeting other people—all of these open our minds—so long as we keep that open mind and don’t judge!

I’ve been fortunate enough to have had a long career as a geologist. For those that don’t know about this particular profession, there is a great deal of travel, living in other countries and tough outdoor work required. Much of it can be dangerous, so we learn—quickly. But how do you safely confront a lion or a grizzly bear? Or work in the jungle? In a desert? Or a cold, snowy outback? By learning from those more experienced and learning from your own experiences, both of which help you to be well prepared.

Did I learn a lot? Oh yes, of course. As a result, I have a lifelong interest in wildlife and the outdoors and much experience. But my key learning came from living and working with people from completely different backgrounds to my own. Different in as many ways as you can imagine. 

With an open, respectfully curious mind, there is great value in learning to live and work with a wide range of people. It will teach you both tolerance and understanding and many other things.

We can all get out and about. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic expedition, just something that you do regularly to get out of your comfort zone and meet other people. Visit another town or city, walk around, talk to people, and really see things; they are all good when you actually do them. 

Then there’s sport. You might think that sport is all about the physical, but it isn’t. Of course, physical fitness and skills are required for most sports, but it’s the mental aspect that dominates. Watch any live sport, particularly the individual ones like tennis, and you’ll see that any competition can quickly become a mental battle. 

And there lies one of the principal benefits of sport, apart from just getting fit and getting to be good at something. We learn to understand what our bodies can and can’t do and how to persevere when things get difficult. This is a lifelong lesson that we can use when things get difficult in our personal or work lives; it builds that mental stamina to press on and succeed or survive when life gets tough.

Sport can be practised at any level; from gentle cycling or walking to explore the countryside to fiercely competitive tennis. Everyone has their own comfort level—you just need to try some sports and see what suits you. Team sports are even better, because then there is the additional advantage of learning to work with others.

If you’re reading this, perhaps it’s just a confirmation of what you are already doing and you understand. If the idea of learning more is new to you, get going! 

Not all of us are the same; we all have varying abilities. I have learnt on my long journey through life that everyone, whatever their background, physical and mental abilities, has at least one thing they can be very good at. 

We can all find our own uniqueness and learn continually as we pass through life, to be the best that we can be. We may not be superstars or billionaires, but, in my humble opinion, that does not matter. What matters is that we make the best of ourselves. And to do that, with at least partial success, we all need to learn and grow throughout our lives. 

Beyond the Bookshelf is a reader-supported publication. If you are looking for ways to support Beyond the Bookshelf, please visit my support page and see the ways you can help continue the mission of exploring the connection between life and literature.

Until next time,