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you learn

Dark clouds, heavy rain, a long trail of brake lights ahead of me meant I was going to be in my car for a little longer. As I was cursing the traffic silently in my heart, next thing I hear on the radio is song I haven't heard in a pretty long time. Something I could reflect from what happened at work today.

Those familiar with radio songs will pretty easily pick up the song and the singer. The chorus really meant something to me. As I sat in the driver's seat slowly inching my car bit by bit in the traffic jam, I heard, "you grieve you learn, you choke you learn, you laugh you learn, you choose you learn, you pray you learn, you ask you learn, you live you learn.".

It's a pretty old song and would probably be more than ten years old but still very relevant to you and me (maybe not to you but it does seem relevant to me). It may not seem as what the writer of the song wanted to mean but I think if I look at it from my life or our lives, it does say something. That something means, we are constantly learning, every day in the things we do. Happy times or sad times, we can still learn a thing or two in those situations.

I used to admire people who seem to know everything. Always seeming to know what to answer or know where to look for those answers. However, there are those who tend to abuse that special gift - those who take too much pride in knowing.

There are times, when I approach people with a question only to find myself getting a long winded, convoluted answer from them. Worst of all when I later find out from someone else that the answer I got earlier was complete irrelevant! Worst of all are those who do not assist you but at the same time try to belittle you in the process. I am sure you would have had such encounters. Not very funny when you are at the receiving, I trust.

At the end of the day, when someone knows more than you, more often than not it is due to that person having more experience than you simply because they have done more in their lifetime than you have. Just like how your parents seem to know more about surviving in this big world than you. I don't particularly believe in a talented person doing better than a normal, average person simply because being talented only means you learn faster than an average person.

Never, ever, ever say you are not as smart as another person because we are all just as intelligent unless your IQ level falls way below the average mark. Being a normal person simply means we learn through doing, listening, observing, trying, etc. Like the lyrics I quoted, you learn when you grieve, you learn when you choke, you learn when you laugh, you learn when you choose, you learn when you pray and etc.......

Don't let anyone put you down simply because they know something you don't. Just because they don't want  to share their knowledge, only means you need to find it elsewhere and out there from my experience, there are plenty of people who enjoy sharing their knowledge with you (and explain it better too!). When you someone puts you down, you grieve but you learn not to be like them. When you ask someone else, you listen and you learn from them. Most importantly, when you live, you learn from the experiences you go through every day until the day you breathe your last breath. You always learn. Always remember - "you live, you learn".

Comments

  1. I love that song. Alanis tells it like it is. So do you.
    I've really enjoyed reading your blog posts: very true and wise words.
    Living life is not only a process of learning, it is also, most crucially, about learning how to learn.

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