A life of learning - be open to change

Who doesn't know it, not to be too sure of his own opinion. I don't just mean this in terms of being right in a discussion with friends but not being completely convinced of your own point of view, but in general the way we go through life. Once we have learned one thing, we will apply this solution scheme to any problem of that kind. As long as this way works, we will not even think that there might be more efficient ways to achieve the same thing.

To put it more simply, man is a creature of habit. But this is not yet the problem I want to address today. I am much more concerned with the fact that we create a certain resistance to learning through this very attitude. After all, why learn something new when you know how to do it?

The answer is simpler than you might think at first. Because it's not only incredibly arrogant to think you've eaten wisdom with spoons, it also hurts us to see the world from new perspectives. It is important not to always look at things from only one side. Of course, it also takes a lot of character to admit after years that there are better ways to achieve goals. For this, we must not only be incredibly honest with ourselves but also admit our missteps to others.

Professionally, I often had to deal with an elderly gentleman. In addition to my visits, a nursing service also came to see him several times a day. Since I acted more as a kind of friend than anything else, I had a pretty good rapport with him. In my humble opinion, by the way, it is often the case that socially isolated individuals (whether due to age, disability or otherwise), need friends rather than caregivers. Someone with whom they can exchange their thoughts on an open level and whom you can also sometimes throw stupid inappropriate sayings at their head. Anyway, this gentleman explained to me every time long and wide what the care had done wrong again today. The wrong ointment incorrectly massaged in, not clockwise to the source of pain, not washed properly in the care or when smearing bread in principle always too much or too little topping. Whatever it was, you couldn't do it right. Of course, it was not up to me to measure whether the tasks of nursing were done well or badly, what I only noticed was that there was never anything positive to report when I came. He knew everything better, even better than trained nursing staff.

This clinging to the belief that only one's own kind or one's own way leads one to the goal has caused more bad in one's life, I think, than all the inferiorly performed tasks of the caregivers.

It is important to be aware that you are nothing more than a fool. That no matter what we learn, there are about a hundred other ways to achieve the same goal. If we are so sure of ourselves, we will not even know 0.01% of the life we could live. Life is about discovering new things all the time, or rather, it's mandatory, but it's what makes a good life. It is not for nothing that Jean-Paul Sartre said that we have found out everything but how to live. But long before Sartre, there were great philosophers who were aware that they knew nothing. Socrates said one thing: "I know I don't know anything."

I hope I could make clear to you with this contribution that we best look at every new situation as such. Because if we always walk through life with admiration for the new, we may have more years under our belt, but we will remain young inside. In life we need a good balance between what we know and the unknown. We need the security of the order but also the attraction of the unknown, the new to be able to always grow. So if someone shows you again how he or she does something, don't think you are better because you do it differently, whether more efficient or not doesn't matter. Try to learn the new and expand your own horizons.