Never. Stop. Learning.

I love learning. Everything. Anything. Any subject. Any topic. I even appreciate learning lessons. Yes, including even the gut-wrenching ones.

If there was a full-time job for a perpetual student, I’d be the first to apply.

I was sad when my school years ended. Partly because I didn’t want to grow up just yet, but mostly because I truly do enjoy learning.

After I graduated college, I contemplated going to law school. But, I went to Wall Street instead because, you know, that’s where poets go.

As an added bonus, I got the chance to study and take many more exams. Believe it or not, I had as much fun studying the material as I did applying it.

Not long after I began working on the Street, something extraordinary happened. The Internet emerged and brought us infinite knowledge at our fingertips.

Suddenly, I found myself in a state of perpetual learning.

I even learned the law!

We live in remarkable times where there is no excuse not to be learning – just as predicted by Isaac Asimov in 1988.

“Once we have computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries, where anyone can ask any question and be given answers and reference material in something you are interested in knowing from an early age, however silly it might seem to someone else, that is what you are interested in.

You can do it in your own room, at your own speed, in your own direction and on your own time. Then everyone will enjoy learning.”

“People think of education as something that they can finish. And what’s more, when they finish, it’s a rite of passage. You’re finished with school. You’re no more a child, and therefore anything that reminds you of school – reading books, having ideas, asking questions – that’s kid’s stuff. Now you’re an adult, you don’t do that sort of thing any more.

You have everybody looking forward to no longer learning, and you make them ashamed afterward of going back to learning. If you have a system of education using computers, then anyone, any age, can learn by himself, can continue to be interested. If you enjoy learning, there’s no reason why you should stop at a given age. People don’t stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age.

What’s exciting is the actual process of broadening yourself, of knowing there’s now a little extra facet of the universe you know about and can think about and can understand. It seems to me that when it’s time to die, there would be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well, learned as much as you could, gathered in as much as possible of the universe, and enjoyed it. There’s only this one universe and only this one lifetime to try to grasp it. And while it is inconceivable that anyone can grasp more than a tiny portion of it, at least you can do that much. What a tragedy just to pass through and get nothing out of it.” – Isaac Asimov, 1988

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