一旦学习停止,单调贫乏的生活就开始了。视学校为汲取知识的惟一场所是种常见的谬误。相反地,从生到死,学习应该是一种无终止的历程。
Learning: a Lifelong Career
As food is to the body, so is learning to the mind. Our bodies grow and muscles develop with the intake of adequate nutritious food. Likewise, we should keep learning day by day to maintain our keen mental power and expand our intellectual capacity. Constant learning supplies us with inexhaustible fuel for driving us to sharpen our power of reasoning, analysis, and judgment. Learning incessantly is the surest way to keep pace with the times in the information age, and reliable warrant of success in times of uncertainty.
Once learning stops, vegetation sets in. It is a common fallacy to regard school as the only workshop for the acquisition of knowledge. On the contrary, learning should be a never-ending process, from the cradle to the grave. With the world changing so fast, to cease learning for just a few days will make a person lag behind. What's worse, the animal instinct dormant deep in our subconscious will come to life, weakening our will to pursue our noble ideas, undermining our determination to sweep away obstacles to our success and strangling our desire for the refinement of our character. Lack of learning will inevitably lead to the stagnation of the mind, or even worse, its fossilization. Therefore, to stay mentally young, we have to take learning as a lifelong career.