Four Things I Learned This Year

Ben at the Instigator Blog is having a year-end blogging project on what we learned this year. Better yet, for each post submitted he’s donating $5 to charity! (Three cheers for Ben )Just like a look back over the day each night is a good way to review how we’ve done, this is a terrific idea for the past year. This is my contribution to the project.

Learning is an ongoing process. Without learning, we cannot grow. Without learning, we cannot change. Not all learning is new. Being human, most of us go through periods where we forget things we knew at one time. Something may happen in our lives to recall it to us, or we may read it in several places and say I knew that. But we really didn’t.

1. Learning isn’t just an intellectual process. It involves our bodies, emotions, and intellect. Above all, it is an active process. We can’t sit back and say Teach me. Until we make something our own, we haven’t learned it.

2. Worries really are self-inflicted. When we were raising our children, Lady Glynis would tell me Don’t sweat the small stuff. My comeback would be The big stuff is made up of small stuff. There is a balance that is necessary, but her main point was that I shouldn’t stress overmuch about thimgs that wouldn’t really matter in the long run. She was right.

3. The internet is the most important change in communication media since the invention of the printing press. I’ve thought this, and said it, for some time. Time magazine evidently agrees since they decided people who communicate over the internet deserved the title of Person of the Year for wresting control of the media from institutions.

4. Given the opportunity, people will treat each other as people. In physical life, our reactions are shaped by appearance - whether someone is attractive or not, their skin color, the amount of money they have, their religion, their age. In our communications over the internet, we don’t know most of these things. Interaction is generally based on what is actually said and how it’s said. As a result, people tend to be kinder to one another and accept each other at face value.

What have you learned this year? How have you shaped your world?

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