After Jude finished high school in Suleja, a town in Niger state- Nigeria, he got admission to study medicine and surgery in one of the best Universities in the country. He was quite serious with his studies and never missed any of his classes. He always read his books, did research and most of his classmates wanted to be like him. After 7 years of med school, he graduated and became a medical doctor but he never stopped reading. He kept on researching and learning new methods in his field. One day, his younger brother paid him a visit and noticed that even after school, his elder brother kept on staying late at night reading as if he was preparing for an examination, so he asked, “Jude, why do you read so much when you have no examination to write, you ought to be resting”.
But Jude replied, “It is true that I have no examination to write but I need to be up to date if I want to be the best medical doctor. I read because I want to know more and I want to learn more”.
Don't think because you have gotten to a particular stage in life or because you have graduated from the University you stop learning. No!!! Please do not make that mistake because learning continues and you stop learning only when you die. You can learn from anything and anyone. You can learn from the beggar on the street, from your barber, from your cook, from your parents, from school, from books, from television, even from nature, you can learn from anywhere. Keep in mind that a wise man can learn from a foolish man but a foolish man cannot learn from a wise man.
Never be too proud to learn, always keep learning. Do not ever assume that you have gotten all the knowledge you need, even Professors still read and learn every day. There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and then you are done with education. The whole of life from the moment you are born to the moment you die is a process of learning.
You can decide to learn from people's experience or your experience. Amisha Patel said, “Life is all about evolution. What looks like a mistake to others has been a milestone in my life. Even if people have betrayed me, even if my heart was broken, even if people misunderstood or judge me, I have learned from these incidents. We are human and we make mistakes, but learning from them is what makes the difference”.
No knowledge is a waste; whatever you learn today will be useful tomorrow. Life is a school and experience is the teacher, do not miss any class or you might fail the exam.
Do not say because you are in the medical field, you will not learn anything from Art or Commerce. Give it a try and learn from other fields, culture and people. That is more reason you need to go out and make friends. When you exchange ideas with people, you learn from one another, that is the essence of friendship.
Reading books is also one of the best ways to acquire knowledge, that is why I always advice my clients to keep reading. The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you.
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow and learn as if you were to live forever.”
-Mahatma Gandhi.
Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. Let learning be part of you. Do not sleep at night until you learn something new for that day. Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young and that is what you are doing by reading this book.
And before I end this chapter, I have a message to all parents – Please do not limit your child's learning to only what you know. Do not limit your child's learning to what you were taught in school. The world is changing, do not limit the future generation to ancient information. This is one of the reasons I believe our education system is so messed up because they keep feeding us with ancient information to operate in a modern world. Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.
Go out and learn something new today and do not come back home if you do not learn anything. I will be watching you in 3D.