Why Learning has No Age…
Remember Professor Snape? Who was Rowling’s go to actor for the role?… It was Alan Rickman, the man who landed his first movie at the age of 46! But could’ve all of this happened, if the man had given up trying, given up experimenting, given up finding his own sense of original? Let’s talk about your favourite fried chicken, Mr. Sanders (later Colonel) switched jobs his entire life, until he took that last audacious step at the age of 40 when he started serving pan fried chicken at a roadside stall. And the rest, well, as they say, is history!
There are so many such examples where people just didn’t play the age card when it came to learning, experimenting something new and got rewarded for the same. Take Nelson Mandela, for instance, who spent 27 long years in prison before becoming the president at the age of 76!
There are more and more people aged above 40years returning to get a college degree or training in some special skills that they want to develop to bridge the gaps between their resumes and the respective dream jobs. Change is a way of life and adjusting to those changes takes ‘learning’. A very good example of this is the internet… the millennials grew up with it. So, naturally they are a lot more comfortable around that. But does that mean the older generation just misses out on the succour, the alleviation that comes with computers and the internet, why?
What we need to understand is that learning is a lifelong process and the one who gets this, is the one who can grow with time. Platforms such as quora, communities such as reddit have grown on the fact that humans thrive on mutual support for knowledge. You search for some info on, let’s say, HTML and the next thing you know is that you built on that info, used it practically, and now you know more than the person who got you started on HTML. This is how we grow as a community. Our brains and the respective workings are different due to a number of factors such as environment and upbringing. We pursue a particular way of life, which is (more or less) shaped by the society. This shouldn’t bind us to that field, and learning is what sets you free. It gives you the power to destine your future and contribute to the society in a greater way.
