How To Be A Work In Progress.

Nothing is ever finished, but nothing is ever over.

You are a learning machine. You’ve been doing it non-stop since the moment you were born and frankly, you’ve managed some pretty amazing things. It’s safe to assume you’ve learned to read. Which leads me to believe you’ve learned to speak too. Or use sign language maybe. I’d argue that these are the most impressive feats of learning we ever accomplish. To go from absolutely nothing to the ability to say “dodecahedron” for example, is nothing short of astonishing.

The fact that you’re reading this on some kind of screen suggests that you’ve learned how to feed and clothe and generally take care of yourself which is also pretty great. Not as impressive as speech, true, but noteworthy. Even if you haven’t figured anything else out yet, the capacity you’ve already demonstrated for learning proves that you can learn anything.

It’s not all good news though. The ability to learn anything might sound good at first, but then you have to remember that anything really does mean anything. Learning can make you better of course, but it can also make you worse. Self-improvement isn’t the kind of thing you can just presume.

I mean, how hard would it be to come up with something you’ve learned which made you a worse person, or at least a less…