Daily Thanks - Day 53 - Learning

Every day we have something to be thankful for. Today I am thankful for learning.

Learning - the cornerstone of human development. What a blessing it is to have a big, spongy ball of matter in our head that soaks up information. Personal development, or advancement, can truly be the most rewarding experience known to our species, and we should be ever so grateful that we are pretty damn good at it.

They say that you learn something new every day, which is true, but misleading. The fact of the matter is that we probably learn hundreds of new things every day. I probably learned 20 new things in the first half hour of my day just by catching a few minutes of the news and by having a brief conversation while getting my coffee. Information is constantly being thrown at us and the amount of time that we spend taking in, storing, and disposing cognitive information is outstanding. By the way, did you know that Bill Murray was bitten twice by the groundhog on the set of "Groundhog Day"?

Some situations in which you can learn something may include: paying attention during social studies, reading an article about NYPD tactics, having sex after 12 shots of tequila, tagging along on a heist, trying on clothes of the opposite sex, poking something with a stick, having an in depth conversation with a homeless person, experimenting with muffin recipes, taking a hip-hop dance class with your homies, etc.

Learning is the acquiring of new knowledge, and though it is true that we learn something new every day, it does not mean that we retain all of that information. People have extremely selective memories, which is why some things we remember and some we do not. We may have spent 6 months in school learning about anatomy and still not know a damn thing about digestive enzymes produced by the pancreas even though it was pounded into our heads over and over. Yet, for some reason, we never forget that thing that someone told us once about ninjas at the age of 8. All it took was one time and it's burned into our brain. The point is, it feels good to learn, and even though information will always find you, it doesn't hurt to seek it out every once in a while. So go learn something! You may remember it forever, you may encode it somewhere in your brain for later retrieval, or you may forget it completely, but at least you tried.

So let's all take a moment and say "Today I am thankful for learning." Unless you have a highly underdeveloped brain and retain very little information which also tends to be incredibly selective in which case you must say "I think he was talking about ninjas....."

Thanks for listening. Check back for more things to be thankful for in days to come.