Learning

Are you a good person? The answer to this question is almost guaranteed to be yes, and the people who say no are just so tiresome I will pretend they said yes as well, because dealing with that brand of Hot Topic self-loathing isn't in the cards for today. So, we all think we're good people, by and large. But could you be a better person? Now, here, if you say no, you're probably awful. and I won't listen to that, either. 

For much of us, there's wiggle room to be a better person. You should want to be a better person, because why not? You have a finite amount of time in this world, and why not keep trying to do better and be better? And it doesn't even have to be hard. And just think: if everyone tried to be better, everything would be better. Is that ever going to happen? 

What's the best way to be better? Learn better. That shit's tight. Socrates, once said something along the lines of, "The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing." This more or less means you will never know everything, and being aware that you don't know everything is a good thing. No one likes a cocky know-it-all. So you start from a position of realizing you know jack, and that leaves a lot of room to learn new stuff. That makes you a wiser, more-rounded person, and that's alright.

While most of us can't wait to get the hell out of school and start a sweet life full of microwave burritos and lazy afternoon jack off sessions between episodes of Maury, some of us keep learning even beyond grad school, and it doesn't require a knit cap or thick-rimmed glasses. Self-directed learning can, in fact, be all kinds of awesome.

While school wants you to learn terrible things like how to make change with an abacus and what Robert Frost thought about farmhouses and cow shit, self-directed learning is all about you. For instance, you can learn the electric guitar, which is awesome. You can play it for friends and family at parties, or on the street for strangers, or in a band at clubs and make hundreds of people feel awesome. You could be Slash and play every Guns N' Roses song, and that is literally the best thing a person can do with a guitar. You can do that! I'm going to do that later! Let's do it together!

There's no downside to learning, unless you're just looking into more efficient ways to dispose of bodies that ensures no gang of kids in the woods will find your latest victim. And that's a good thing, too. So even your learned psychosis is kind of a good thing. Face it, learning is aces. Go learn shit.