Learning : A sempiternal process ?

One fine day, when I was providing a feedback to one of my friends on his story, a thought crossed my mind. I didn’t pay much attention to the implications of it, and just wrote it par se. The musing was:

“Life is, but, a sempiternal learning process! In its true sense, learning didn't start when you were born, it doesn't stop either, when you die, and it’s just that when you were born it continued from your parents and others in your milieu who'd have lessened the acclivity of their learning curve!”

I thought of finding a justification for it, of course I can attribute this post to the discussions I had, today morning, with Munmun & Satish.

Learning is a vital developmental process, through which an individual acquires knowledge, skills and a plethora of other abstract qualities. A human being can learn only when he can contain in his memory a particular happening or an idea and later apply it in context at the time of need. Knowledge, being a subset of the more generalised superset of the entire process of learning, can be thought of as being slowly acquired when a child starts reasoning and understanding things. Why do I consider learning as sempiternal? There are certain aspects which were not taught by one’s parents, for everything else, there were of course books and myriad instructions to follow. For example, response to stimuli was acquired naturally, not when somebody actually taught us to react in that way. You’ll throw away a very hot pan, or your eye pupil will automatically contract when exposed to bright sunlight. You’ve the ability to flex your muscles or wave your hand laterally. Did that come from your parents? Yes, in a way, as they are the source of your existence. From the genetic point of view, these abilities were embedded in your genes accrued to the process of evolution, and again, the source (of the genes) was the parents.

The ebullience bubbling from within when you see something beautiful, think of an exotic holiday away from the din and bustle of city life, or the thought of an approaching weekend, a festival, a birthday or a marriage, is something quite natural. Nobody taught you that you should react in that way, or did they? Your Mechanical Engineering lab attendant might have helped you at using a vise for the very first time, to clamp a work piece to allow work to be performed on it using other tools, such as saws, but he didn’t reiterate. That’s because you learned at a single instance what you were taught, and that got definitely added to your knowledge base, in your process of learning. When you hear of the bereavement of a very dear relative or a friend, you sit in stupor for a very long time, without responding, ruminating through the good-ol times you spent with the person, you feel nostalgic and truly lost somewhere, these are natural feelings emanating from you, again, you were not taught that at the receipt of such a bad news you are supposed to respond the way. Where do you think those feelings came from? Definitely, from your parents!


The apathy a person normally shows at beggars partly might be construed to the environment he’d grown up. When he’d never seen his parents donating a penny to them, he’d probably act in the same way. On the other hand, he might, as well, go against them, and turn out to be a great philanthropist. The pain and suffering of a person of limited means can only be felt; it is something to be seen and he could, as well, be helped at our own discretion, to somehow mitigate his sufferings, and make his two ends meet. If we leave his development at the suo motu cognizance of NGOs or the Government, we, perhaps, are waiving ourselves off the compunctions that make ourselves humane, the feelings that came to us naturally as a part of the learning process.

When you fall in love with a person, do you really understand how you drown yourself in the viscosity of emotions? Do you realise how much time you spend thinking about him or her, once again it’s natural, in the process of learning, rather, inherited from humankind!

And for the last clause of the issue, I’d like to bastion that on the judgement of a visionary. His vision would transcend quite a few years ahead, from the time of his existence, into that period which would come after he’d have knocked the doors of quietus. Where did that foresight come from? Obviously, from the knowledge acquired by him that far, and applying that to find out what’d happen in future. So, the process of learning in this case surpassed death, it went to somebody else from the person after his death, but especially when he’d already foreseen what’d happen in future, and he’d have possibly suggested ways of combating an impending mayhem that would have vitiated normal living conditions!

As our parents and relative grow old they gradually tend to lose their interest to learn, that’s the time when we become more zealous in that aspect. In a way, it instigates us more to learn, to acquire greater knowledge and apply it appropriately. Hence, the process of learning goes on and on eternally, transcending barriers, generations and time!