tools of the trade

Winter is back, well almost! brings almost a crispness to everything, and makes me realize (again) that the way you feel has some major effect on how you act. The chill keeps everything clear and especially with its slight tinge of cold bite. I would go as far as describing breathing the cooler air even more pleasurable.

On a day like this, we should talk about progress in ourselves and in essence the entire human race. Progress is how we develop and advance as explained in my earlier posts, yet today i will write on the actual process and perhaps some of the understanding i have of it.

We all start learning with our minds and wonderful brains from way before we can even realize it. From the moment our bodies learn to do things which are instinctual or handled by our subconscious, to opening our eyes, crying when we are hungry as babies, to learning balance, copy expressions and all the way to where we are today. Many scholars would know the saying : "seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave" and this is what our bodies do without us realizing it. The problem is that we don't fully understand our bodies well enough to know that whilst we might be doing what seems to be good to help our health, we might be forcing ourselves to be worn down in other area,

for example: painkillers are used these days to satisfy our most feeble of whims, even just the onset of a headache, we go for a painkiller (usually in tablet form). This helps us feel better giving us relief, but what most of us don't realize is that our body gets used to this feeling and becomes immune to the initial dosage and over time we have to acquire a larger dosage for the same effect. At the same time, taking these tablets, also have residue which flow in our systems, and has to be dealt with in our bodies and the main recipients of this is our kidneys thus requiring them to work overtime. Sometimes, these residues also build up over time and create complications with our kidneys such as kidney stones.

Moving on, we know that our bodies learn subconsciously, and our minds develop with our repeated exposure to our environments and stimulus (such as books, internet, texts, meeting, people, etc). My question is then, what is the best way to best develop our minds in an efficient way that would produce consistent results.

Currently, we attend schools which are our way or learning and studying, getting exposure to the different subjects that we need to learn off and become familiar with in order to understand and advance ourselves in our thinking. There is a difference how ever in the way things are taught at schools and hence transferred onto the students. The actual reason for going to school is actually blurred to an extent that most peoples perceptions are that we go to school to learn things so that we can get a qualification to get a job and earn a living. What we learn at schools is the actual content of knowledge. We learn facts and names, places and date, yet we tend to learn little of how to and what to do to all this information on our own devices.

What we actually need are the tools to learn, and not the content itself, since if we are given the tools properly, we can educate ourselves at any time and place, be it at school itself or not. These kind of tools are the building blocks of understanding.

We can however learn throughout our lives, and if we were of the unfortunate who never really got proper exposure to these kind of tools, we can  still discover and learn. So , if we know its exists we can pursue our understanding and progress in life.