By Byron Pulsifer, © 2008
There is an odd anomaly here on this planet, and it isn't the fact that the earth has been recently struck by a meteor from a distant galaxy. Nor is it that the notion that you can't teach old dogs new tricks.
The real anomaly is that old dogs don't necessarily want to learn new tricks, or they don't want to learn some new tricks because those that are doing the teaching were once their students. Some of this attitude may be one of self-confidence, or it may be that we have forgotten that "we don't know it all", and never will.
Maybe, there is also the question mark whether some of us can muster enough brain cells to learn some new tricks.
What all of this really says, however, is that we should always be open to learn, and to use that parlance often used in corporate worlds, we have to engage in continuous learning. These words, though, are sometimes easier to say than to allow us to openly grasp them with vigour. Is it that we have forgotten how to learn, or is it simply that we think that age and life experience allows us to somehow skip over this aspect of life?
Sometimes, familiarity breeds the notion that we can carry on as we always have. Or, often we assume that skills and knowledge once tested on a daily or weekly basis by an uninviting environment, need not be tested any longer because of more friendly atmospheres or more forgiving colleagues. The real truth, of course, is that there is no final plateau one reaches that gives one the leg up, so to speak, on anyone else or on any given situation or challenge.
Life continues to evolve every second; our knowledge needs to be caressed, re-built, added to, and multiplied less we find ourselves slipping further down the slope that sees us less than adequate, less than needed, or less than valued. As life evolves so should we on a continuous basis.
