Learning With a Why.

A student is not just a person who is in school. A student is someone who is learning. We are all students.

A lot of times people don't like school. The second they hear the word student, they're like, oh no, I'm out of here. They don't want to be a student. The other extreme is people who learn to feed their egos, feeling superior to others. In both cases - the one who says they don't like learning and the one who learns to feel superior - they are both lacking the why in learning.

I truly believe everyone can love learning. As Samuel Johnson said, "People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed." So I'm going to say this again: humans inherently want to learn new things. How do you think we went from cavemen to where we are today? Maybe that was a need for survival - but some unique things have always been done for the purpose of learning and improving the human experience.

No one could have told you we needed a new iPhone in the early 2000s. We could've just kept the old phones, the ones wired into the wall. Steve Jobs knew something was missing; he wanted to learn.

All of us want to learn - maybe some more than others. Eventually, we all shape into the people that we are because of our innate curiosity here on Earth. How else would we progress since birth?

A lot of people learn to feel superior - and that's a selfish way to go about it. What if we removed all the ego from learning? When did this competitiveness of trying to be better than others ever truly enhance our ability to learn? Obviously, competition can be a good thing, but when you're truly yourself and you're just trying to get better than yourself every day, then you're not competing with anyone, because no one is better at being you than you. And you'll go further.

The whole point of learning is number 1: it should be an endeavor that you truly want to pursue. And number 2: you're doing it for a reason. Sometimes the only reason we do it is the potential outcome. Studying is sometimes incredibly plain work, and sometimes we don't want to do it - however we want to get into college, so we study to get there.

Now that we have fixed the why comes the third aspect: remembering the importance of human connection while still striving toward our goal. As C.G. Jung said, "Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul be just another human soul."

We want goals to strive for. But we don't want to miss out on those uniquely human moments. Think about when you see a stranger on the street, and you wave at them with a smile - it's a happy moment because we're all human and it's okay just to be another human being. When you give positivity, you become a more positive person. You become a happier person when you're kind to other people. It really is true that you get what you give - and that circles back to learning: we learn and make things to show appreciation to humanity. That's the why.