Continuous Learning

I thank Allah for His blessings,

For giving me everything I could ask for. 

I realize it's really easy to fall into this world's trap. Like Yasmin Mogahed always said about how we tend to keep something in our heart. 

Today, I want to write about continuous learning. Continuous learning, according to my dictionary, is the act of acquiring knowledge and skills, regardless whether they are new or known. In other words, we just don't stop learning. I tend to limit myself to seek information on new things only, whereas the things that I'm aware of, I just could not care less. I recently discover that this is not particularly a healthy habit. 

For example, I try to make it a habit to have mental translation of recitals during Solat. So, my brain just silently trying to understand the Arabic terms in Malay. It's not easy to stay focused, but at least we try. And we can always call our mind to stay focus again once it wanders somewhere. Recently, for some reason, I lost this habit and there are couple of words that I got mixed up. So, I searched for the translation again and I managed to learn other definitions of the words. SubhanAllah. If I just assume things, then I could never go anywhere. 

That's another unhealthy habit which I might practise as well: assuming things. If I assume I know things, I just won't learn anything new. If I assume I know the way to KLCC from Kuala Selangor, I might get lost and stuck somewhere. If I assume I know the traffic from Setiawangsa to Wangsa Maju, I might get stuck in terrible traffic. Assuming is also not helpful in terms of maintaining healthy relationship. We assume that our partner is angry, but in fact they are just sleepy and avoid talking with us. 

I also recently come across this term: stupidly intelligent or intelligently stupid. Can't remember which one, but you need stupidity in order to have eagerness, curiosity and desire to learn new things. You must realize that you are lacking some information, hence, you must identify a question, and then you walk your way up (or down, if it matters) to find the answer, hence improving your understanding. Keep being curious will help us to be more inspired to practise continuous learning. This also reminds me of Steve Job's speech back in 2005, in which he quoted "Stay hungry, stay foolish'. 

Well, I think that's all for now. I have listed few things I want to write, so insyaAllah, I will write on them soon.