One day I was reading a book and I got a phone call from a friend. She asked, “What are you doing?” and I replied that I am reading a book and she laughed and asked that you have done your education then why are you reading now? This question shocked me.
At an elder age we think our life is finished and now we just need to wait for death. Well, life is not that much shorter. We used to eat in youth, still eat now, used to sleep in youth, still sleep now, used to travel in youth, still travel, wanted to look beautiful in youth and we still want to look good. So the thing is if nothing has changed with age than why we have changed our priorities on the basis of our age.
Why do we not want to learn anything in our elder age?
- If it’s about technology, we are afraid to be hacked.
- We feel ashamed because to learn we have to seat with youngers
- Other people make fun and ask stupid questions
- We believe in superstition that this is not the age of learning.
- Learned a lot, so now we need to rest.
- Lack of curiosity
Let’s see one by one each of excuses:
If it’s about technology
Now the world is full of new technologies and there are many elder people especially in India who are not aware about the technologies and when they come to know about these new technologies, they start blaming that these technologies are making our life difficult but actually we are making our life difficult by not learning.
There are also a lot of misconceptions about new technologies, especially about the internet. Still there are many people who do not use internet banking, online transactions, online shopping or any kind of software. Because they think anybody can hack them. Which is true but not 100%. Hacking is possible when we are in ignorance. And if we do not know about these things then the possibility of hacking increases even more. So the best and simplest way to be safe is to learn about it.
We feel ashamed
Because we are not young now, we are ashamed when we have to sit with younger people. We feel that we should know more than them and if we don’t know, we don’t want to accept it openly. It is very hard to feel that everyone is younger than us. But Youngsters are not like that. They are even more receptive and they feel motivated by seeing our curiosity. And if you don’t feel like that then it’s ok, you are there just for learning so only focus on that not anything else.
People make fun
There will always be some people who will troll you. They never care about age, situations, problems, they will always pull you back. So the best thing to do with them is “Give a big smile and move on.” They will no longer do that. You don’t need to focus on every person. Only care for people, who care for you.
This is not the age of learning
Well, this is a bigger misconception. From our childhood to till now we learn about doing things on time. Whether it is about play school. Primary school, secondary school, graduation, post-graduation, we always consider age limits everywhere. So our mind very strongly believes in the age limit. But life never works like this. There is no age of desire, no age of dreaming, no age of death even. If nature is not considering age, then why are humans so serious about age?
Learned a lot now we need to rest
Well, this is true. Elders already learnt a lot in their life. Now they feel tired of learning and want to rest their mind and body. And also they have already achieved many things in life so there is also no requirement of learning.
But we are living in this current world and to interact with the world effectively we need to upgrade ourselves. If we don’t upgrade, we have to pay the cost for it directly or indirectly. When we stop acquiring knowledge, we get stuck and we don’t fit properly in an upgrading world. If we see, many elder people are like “what will we do by reading books? Now it makes no sense of learning or adding skills”. Skills are not to be learnt to just achieve a good job, make a business or money. Skills make us better humans. And there is no age for being a better person.
Lack of curiosity
We have already learnt a lot because of that nothing excites us to learn. Because of that we stop learning and then our learning power becomes weak. After that when we try to learn we realise that it is taking a lot of time to understand and takes a lot of effort. And we lose our curiosity to learn. This is so common. When we don’t use the muscles of our body it becomes weak but when we start working on it, it naturally gains its power again. So keep trying and never give up.
This is a blog on “What is the correct age of learning?” You tell me what you have learnt in your recent days? Also tell me, is blog helpful for you? And Thanks for reading.
