You Can't Not Learn!

Recently while emailing my daughter-in-law, I started to write "we learn from our kids" and realized it was too limited, so I extended it mentally to "and our kids’ spouses." Obviously that was too limited, as well.

Then it hit me. We learn from everyone and everything. The how doesn’t matter. It could be through a conversation, a book, a website, or a more in depth relationship. It could be through observation, a book, or a tv show. It might be from sitting and letting the knowing happen.

We might be learning positively or negatively, consciously or unconsciously, but we’re learning on a constant basis. We are self-programming computers with data input from the environment that’s writing to our internal hard drives 24/7.

Sounds cool in theory and maybe a bit overwhelming. Here’s some real life possibilities.

You may learn where one of your mental/emotional/belief boundaries is due to a conversation or a comment that violates it: and something you may not have consciously realized before.

You may take in some new tidbit of information that clicks with your needs.

You might learn a major life lesson on any given day.

Hopefully, you learn from your mistakes. (If not the first time, then sooner or later!

When I started paying attention I was amazed at the learning opportunities, large and small, that present themselves all around me. And I don’t want to lose them, at least not on a conscious level. So, before going to bed at night, I’ve found it helpful to make notes on things I’ve learned for the day. Some days are veritable feasts. Other days are a little lean. Just think about it… can you imagine a lifetime of such notes!

For fun, some things I learned today:

A friend told me the name of an inexpensive software that writes from spoken language, and where I can buy it.

If I leave the cat food sitting for an hour, my cat is likely to revisit it and actually eat what he ignored earlier.

If I catch the mats in his fur (he’s a longhair cat) when they first start forming, I can gently pull them apart with my fingers, then brush them out.

Rereading some old letters my daughter wrote while she was at music camp taught me lot about her as viewed from my more mature perspective today. It shed light on some of her inner workings and shifted my awareness of her needs.

From that I recognized that even though I think I really know someone, every person is a vast field of being that will always hold mystery for me. We are small universes colliding in space and slipping through one another with most of our inner matter untouched.

What have you learned today? I’d love to hear!

Saundra_M