All experiences, good and bad,
are learning experiences. Yes, there are opportunities to learn something even
with traumatic experiences such as accident, physical injuries etc. and
relatively minor experiences such as fall-from-grace, humiliation, divorce,
disgrace etc. In fact everything is a learning experience. Even all (apparent)
hindrances to one’s progress are actually opportunities to
evaluate-learn-innovate-improve.
Is our innate goal to know it
all and reach perfection?
Consider the above illustration: Brain as a platform for building information connects which in turn generates knowledge which in turn allows for ‘wisdom’. Like a breadboard where connections between points are made, connections like these together form a circuit to perform a larger function. Consider the neurons in the brain to be like these connection points waiting to be connected to another. A fresh (newborn) brain is blank and without any links….blank, happy, innocent and blissful.
A link between a few neurons
may be formed when the baby learns that a smile gives (mother’s) attention in
return.
Links are thereafter
continuously formed and reorganized in different patterns over these infant
years. Even a fall during its first steps also links connections, as this too
is learning.
Later on in life, reading a
book builds a few hundred connections (words, ideas, grammar, writing styles
etc.)
Playing the piano builds
another bus of connections in another area within the gooey matter.
Pursuing a hobby builds a few
hundred.
Focusing on one area (say in
one’s career) could organize the related connections from what looked like
chaos at first to a pattern over the years of accumulation.
One may just not really know it
all but may reach the threshold of completeness. It would seem there is
infinite storage and infinite more stuffs to be learnt. But there could be
peace at the stage when there is a pattern in the connections say like the image
on the right.
