To Keep Learning…
January 1, 1970
“The grand essentials to happiness in this life,” said Addison, “are something to do,
something to love, and something to hope for.” And we should like to add another element:
something to learn. This thought is suggested by a sentence from an unknown source: “If you
were graduated yesterday, and have learned nothing today, you will be uneducated
tomorrow.” In looking at learning, it is sobering to consider how much change there has been;
how few textbooks, for example, from which we were once taught, have since survived,
especially in technical subjects. Sometimes young people lose faith, or become confused,
because of some theory or some supposed conflict between what were thought to be two
truths, and later learn that what they lost their faith for has since been abandoned or modified
by further findings–and so they lost their faith for little real reason. We all have to keep
learning. “We shall never see the time when we shall not need to be taught,…” Adults have to
keep learning long after they have left school. All people in all professions have to keep
learning–or they will soon find themselves far behind. And anyone who thinks because he has
a label, because he has acquired credits and credentials, he can now relax and wait for things to
come his way, has thought what simply isn’t so. Commencement means being about to begin – commencing to prove oneself to be profitable and productive, not forgetting the great
investment that parents and others have made, and not forgetting also to pay some part of this
debt by becoming useful, respectful, competent. Smugness in learning, conceit in learning, is
never becoming to anyone. We must constantly keep in mind open to truth, a simple faith, and
humility. With standards and principles and keeping the commandments, we need to keep a
flexibility in our lives for further truth, for the further finding of facts. “… Something to do,
something to love, something to hope for” and something to learn. “We shall never see the
time when we shall not need to be taught.”