With schools returning this week after that long summer break (which I know many of us wish we still had) it got me to thinking about learning as a child.
Learning was our full time job, in school it was structured and well planned out for us and involved exams which resulted in successes and failure. At home it was a lot more fun whether that be learning to ride a bike or bake a cake with your parents etc, again with degrees of success or failure…..cuts and bruises on the knees usually a great measure of success (obviously for riding a bike and not baking!!). Whatever the circumstance we were always learning, almost 100% of the time, to grow to be the people we are today.
Now that we have grown up how many of us still consider ourselves to be learning whether that be structured, throughout our day to day lives or just for fun? How many people think they have nothing left to learn, there is nothing more that interests them they wish to learn about or probably the most common one that they no longer have the time to learn? How often do we look back over the week to reflect on our successes and failures and what learning we can take from that?
With that in mind I found the following quotes to be quite pertinent:
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
So let this week be the start of our own grown up school year and commit to learning through the most accessible ways possible.
