The Highest Form of Learning Is Unlearning

Contemplating one’s death is often avoided, though it’s arguably the single most fundamental aspect that gives meaning to our lives. It is the very foundation to one’s purpose, drive, ambition, reason and choice.

Although we have been taught through our fast-paced meritocratic societies not to focus on this matter in depth — choosing to dilute and celebrate this concept into shallow ‘philosophies’ such as ‘YOLO’ — it is very apparent now during this pandemic that we are very much lost as a society.

Despite its gravity and its potential for fatality, we as a nation are bumbling through, awkwardly laughing and joking through our responsibilities as we have no grasp of how we must act collectively, being so attuned to the norms of our individualistic lifestyles.

We can see that people are dying at an exponential rate in neighbouring Italy and Spain, countries where millions of us frequent on a regular basis, and yet, because that information is delivered to us through the same platforms that we consume our daily entertainment from, we are unable to discern or accept it as a reality that will affect us. It is apparent that we lack the life skills, the foresight and the understanding of the fragility of our existence, which we have given such little thought to… purely because we have taken our existence and its privileges for granted.

Consider this:
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted…”

Albert Einstein

We find ourselves lost without admission, because our leaders have failed us, realising our Insta Idols only guided us on how to lead our best lives in the context of our privileges, founded on a false reality of materiality. As we now gaze across the current landscape, some of us may begin to see the shattered structures of authority, at the disillusions we had of fulfillment, tainted principles by which we lived by and skewed perspectives on meaningless objectives, we must contemplate on purpose.

Nature has brought us to our knees so that we stare at it now, eye to eye, and not from our towers of ego, infallibility and pretension. Who are we here to please, if not our ego who cares for nothing but temporary admiration and self-preservation? What were we trying to fulfill all this time while these constructs were upheld? Has our ego been serving us or have we been serving it?

“The highest form of learning is unlearning…”

When searching for answers, be it to live a more fulfilling life or even to question life’s purpose, is it not prudent to first examine the foundations and assume an approach of skepticism? Since birth, we’ve had certain walls built around us, cultural landscapes that have been ploughed, seeded and bloomed, deeply rooted into the core of our society and have narrated our course of life, obscuring our perception on what it really means to be human.

And so, we must question the way we have lived life thus far, how we have consumed life thus far. In our shifted perspective, what is the value to fashion? What is the value to status? What does it now mean to have a nice car, designer labels, the newest gadgets and sculpted social identities? And what is the cost of having these possessions?

These ‘things’ only give us meaning in the context of those walls that were built around us, but as we now gaze at our crumbling landscape, we begin to realise we have very little to hold on to but ourselves and our loved ones.

When we talk of the fabric of the universe, we allude to a woven tapestry of fibers, which by themselves are mere strands, but when aligned, woven and in harmony with one another, can be seen as a work of art, as a source of security and warmth, and foundational to many aspects of growth and development. Yet, our constructs have directed us towards thinking of ourselves as simple strands of that fabric, mere threads which by themselves offer very little value to themselves or their surroundings.

We enter this Earth, quite literally connected to ‘the other’ through a placenta, and essentially only arrived due to the actions of ‘the other’ with ‘another’, whose existence was based also on the actions of another with another, and so on. And so, this principle of ‘YOLO’ and ‘you were born alone and you will die alone’ is mere dogmatism that enforces individuality rather than collectivism and unity, which has been our natural predisposition since birth.

Our perspective should now have shifted, having been brought down to our knees, it’s easy to see from these heights the damage we have done and confinements of ‘security’ we have created for ourselves.

“rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke…”

Henrik Ibsen

Let us use this time to reflect. Let us question our existence, our fragility, our inner desires, principles, values, thoughts, ideas, beliefs and choices… so that we may have a better outlook, a better perspective on our true selves, of our strands in relation to the fabric, for a strand will last much longer as part of a fabric, but will perish very quickly on its own. Let us unlearn and reconstruct our identities with an altruistic approach; let us shift our gaze and begin to ask what we may do to serve, and not to prosper, to give and not to expect, and to love without condition.

We have been trained to view relationships as transactional, and if, upon reflection, this is your worldview, then you must ask yourself, what does the universe owe you for what you have given to it?