about educating yourself
We live on planet Earth, which has a total area of about 197 MILLION square miles. In those 197 million square miles there are 7 continents, 195 countries, and 7.9 billion people. Those 197 million square miles, 7 continents, 195 countries, and 7.9 billion people on this one planet exist as not even a tiny speck in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is one of hundreds of billions in the OBSERVABLE universe.
We are quite literally a speck of a speck of a speck in the universe. And the coolest thing about it is that the odds of each one of our individual lives ever even coming into existence is one in over 400 TRILLION. EACH ONE OF US.
Okay, enough numbers for now. All of this being said- our world, and especially our universe, is so vast that there’s an incomprehensible amount of knowledge about any subject you could possibly think of, and it is human nature to be curious about it. One small problem: we have been programmed our entire lives into the belief that there is one career for each of us; one subject, one set of knowledge, and one path we thrive in more than the others, and we have put all our energy into pursuing that. As soon as you hit college where you have the materials and professors to educate you on a wide variety of topics, you get about a year or two and then BOOM. You have to know what career field you are going into, you declare your major, and any course or any subject that doesn’t fall into that sphere gets pushed to the back burner. You know- because why should you be able to explore your interest in philosophy or physics when your major is advertising? You actually have to take 50 credit hours worth of communication classes that are all virtually indistinguishable from one another instead! There is such a strong emphasis on cramming everything you need to know about your future career into four years of education that it hinders your ability to learn about virtually anything else.
Well, there’s just one solution: do it yourself then. It’s that simple. I know you have the time and desire to do it, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this post. Honestly, taking it into your own hands is sometimes significantly better than taking a course. You save the hundreds of dollars, your brain won’t categorize it as a “chore” because you can do it on your own time, and you can skip over anything you aren’t necessarily interested in. It’s as simple as searching up a podcast to listen to on a walk or putting on a YouTube video while you eat.
Find anything that interests you and just decide one day to learn something about it. For me it’s mainly the three P’s: psychology, philosophy, and physics. Something about learning how the universe works and how people think fascinates me. I totally nerd out on the frequencies and energies of the universe and how to align yourself with them, or the reasoning behind why certain people think the way they do, or how there is no 100% right or wrong philosophical concept. But your thing could be different- it could be certain time periods in history or astronomy or a certain part of the world or even how cars work.
Regardless of what it is, it’s such an overlooked form of self-care to lean into your natural curiosity for certain things and allow yourself to feel the satisfaction of answering questions that randomly pop into your head. Not for an exam, not to impress anyone, just for yourself. And the comfort of knowing that it’s okay to not fully understand it because it’s just for you makes it so much more enjoyable than learning in a classroom setting. The more you learn, the more whole you feel; the more you fall in love with life and the human experience and this universe. There is no rush to learn about everything under the sun, but it is all there right at your fingertips whenever your curiosity leads you there. And I think that is so beautiful.
