Intellectual Well-centeredness.
I am a lifelong learner. As a university professor, I have had the goal from day one to never become “that professor”—the one whose course content is dated and irrelevant. Moreover, I don’t want to become trapped in what I “know”. Truth is constant, but our knowledge of Truth should not be. Knowledge is understanding, and understanding changes as knowledge grows.
Central to Intellectual well-centeredness is setting time aside on a daily basis for reading and other intellectual pursuits. If we know a lot, it is probably more and more of less and less. We know the outcome of this, right? We learn more and more about less and less until we know everything about absolutely nothing.
Read outside of your area of expertise. I would go as far as to say read outside of your area of interest. Broaden your interests. Prepare yourself to be able to interact with people who have interests that are different than your own.
Someone has said that to become more interesting show interest in others. We learn more by listening and being interested in others. We all know how uncomfortable it is to be in a “conversation” in which we can’t get a word in. I wrote in the preceding post about “allowing space for the soul to speak”. Here is an example of how our Intellectual well-centeredness builds upon our Spiritual well-centeredness.
Intellect is bigger than self. Hence, we all have much to learn. Sadly, the educational systems of today have diminished our capacity to learn for the sake of learning. Students, today, are more likely than ever to ask the question, “Will this be on the test?” This leads to an education that ends when the course ends and the diploma is received. It leads to learning just what we need to get by.
Intellectual well-centeredness is looking for every opportunity to learn something new—to grow Intellectually. Read. Listen. Watch. Do. Be ever-learning.
I recently discovered Kahn Academy. I dove back into the deep-end with Integral Calculus and a Programming course. It has been roughly 35 years since I have studied mathematics (excluding the statistics courses I took in graduate school). I have forgotten a lot. Programming? I use the open-source software R in my research, but I struggle to write my own functions and code. My last programming training was on Fortran in ’82 or ’83. I need a bit of a refresher!
I enjoy reading, but I don’t stick to my 30-minutes-a-day goal. I tend to justify it by the time I spend in class preparation and research, as well as doing things like Kahn Academy, but that is a poor excuse. Reading, as they say, “is fundamental”.
Intellectual well-centeredness also includes other activities that challenge the brain. We all spend some amount of time engaged in “mindless” activity on our electronics, e.g., smart phones. These activities should not dominate our time, but a certain amount of play can be useful when games are selected that exercise the brain—activities such as puzzles and word games.
We can all improve our intellectual capacity. Dedicating time for the pursuit of Intellectual well-centeredness is an essential component of personal growth and our understanding of and engagement in the world around us.
Be your best today; be better tomorrow.
Carpe momento!