Unending Education 📈
Facing Fears and Adventures in Auroville
Hey Learners,
The past 2 months have been a roller coaster ride with so much happening around the world. And a lot of changes in all of our personal lives.
After an unusually long stay at home last year and following my recovery from Covid, I started traveling locally in India from mid-december. I was backpacking through South India for the past three weeks, working from hostels and meeting lots of new folks along the way.
My workspace in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu
My priorities shifted while traveling. I forgot about the newsletter (and lost the determination to write) and put a full stop on learning.
❌ Learning Never Stops.
I used to believe that you’re only learning when enrolled in a structured course. But I realised most of our knowledge after university comes by living our life naturally and reflecting on our days / weeks / months.
So after two months of scolding myself for not writing the newsletter, I am back again.
Writing sample learning resources on skills I found interesting got time-consuming and barely any fun, so this week’s issue is a bit different.
As I work on defining my North Star for this project, please enjoy a few personal learnings and stuff I encountered over the past 2 months.
Covid and Fear
When I tested positive for Coronavirus in November, I was secretly glad to have gotten it and be done with covid so I can travel. I was only worried about my parents health and I noticed our doctor constantly say, “don’t let fear overtake you”.
Fear and anxiety can weaken our immune system and increases the risk of infection.
Now imagine a person in an ICU battling covid after watching the terrible news of death all over the world for the past year.
How would he/she not be scared?
I realized it’s easy to give advice and tell others not be fearful, but when life is at stake, fear has a high chance of overtaking your optimistic mindset. When I think about fear, I often remember this quote from the novel Dune:
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
- Frank Herbert,Dune
How do you react to stressful situations?
My family’s restaurant in Bangalore caught fire on December 26 which completely destroyed the ground and the 1st floor. Thankfully, no one was injured. At a time when covid and lockdowns had already impacted the business severely, this was a big blow.
But I saw my dad and brother deal with the situation in a calm and composed way, getting the operations started in just 3 days after the fire.
Learning here is that worrying on a loss will not solve your problem and do you any good. Taking action on repairing it will.
There’s no point pondering over things not in your control, however big they may seem.
Unending Education at Auroville
I visited Auroville earlier in January, India’s famed utopian community - https://auroville.org/
The place wasn’t buzzing like usual because of covid restrictions, but I could still sense a vibrant peaceful energy around.
Pictured above: Maitrimandir in Auroville.
Maitri means kindness towards every living being starting with self. Mandir means temple.
I loved reading their take on unending education:
“The characteristics of the world in 20 years from now are unknown, except that they will be rich in new challenges at an unprecedented scale and complexity. Still, it seems that everywhere students are conditioned to fit in the unsustainable world of yesterday. Auroville has to prepare the students to be ready for a world that doesn’t exist yet, to think out of preconceived ideas, and to face new challenges in a creative and cooperative manner, carried by the faith that a new world is possible. There is no existing certificate system to validate this. The surest way to prepare the students to a challenging but unknown future is to help them to develop their personality as integrally as possible and to prepare them to enter an unending process of learning.”
Speaking Clearly
My youtube algorithm suggested a video on speaking clearly. It turned out to be a good one.
The first tip was to practice tongue twisters to improve clarity. Doing it loudly helps.
Here’s a few to try:
Six thick thistle sticks
Aluminium linoleum, linoleum aluminium
Three grey geese in the green grass grazing,
Grey were the geese and green was the grass.
Check out the full video HERE.
First play games, then study
Found this intersting takeaway on games and studying in the Fab Fridays newsletter:
“If we want kids to retain what they “study" better, they should play video games first, then study before going to sleep. While it may sound counterintuitive, studies show that when we go to sleep, our brain focuses on the most salient problem it was recently trying to solve (think Queen’s Gambit). So reverse the order: First play, then study.”
It’s relevant all adults as well, who are looking to find a balance between their studies and video games.
That’s all for this week, folks!
If you have any feedback or comments on what you’d like to read more of, I’d love to hear from you, just hit reply :)