Ask yourself

The older I get the less I know.

And the the older I get the harder I find it is to learn new things. Often you go to a class or a workshop only to find the material is something you learned before with a new acronym to define it. This however does not stop me from trying to learn. 

Technology is changing rapidly. We are undergoing a technological revolution. There is much to learn there. There is also a great deal to learn about the ethics of it all. How do we go forward learning and growing as human beings if we let a computer write our sympathy or apology notes? How does this help us grow our humility? The greatest learning any of us ever do is not in a house or in a university, but within ourselves as we stumble through life with others.

Thinking about ourselves, how we feel, how we act and watching others as they navigate life is the most interesting learning I have ever had. And that continues as I age. Perhaps I am not as a challenged by some supposedly newish ideas that are as old as philosophy itself, but I continue to marvel at the human condition.

The way we connect with each other. The way we dream, nurture, deepen, and change over a lifetime is as interesting as most novels. It is here that I discover I know so very little for each of us is a miracle. And a miracle can never be fully understood.

I love how each human being comes to self understanding at different times in different ways. Last weekend I was with a group of women for a little retreat. In that room, women aged thirty to eighty gathered around to talk, share, eat and have fun. It was clear that each person was at a different part of their life story and their understanding of it and it had nothing to do with age. It had to do with seeking, and of course with finding. Not necessarily finding the answers. I mean finding yourself. It had to do with practicality. It had to do with understanding love, joy, loss, and fragility. These big things when we learn them at any age change us and can make us grow old while we are still quite young.

So for humanity, I am grateful because it is ever interesting. It bends and blows to the winds of the day but I have a strong hope that we know that at our centre, our very core, that is where we must grow. And no computer program, no algorithm can do this for us. And I think we know this.

We know it from making, from beauty, from art, from literature and music. We know that to feel is human. That to express what we feel is divine. And we cannot live without this because it is our sustenance. It is how we have grown as a human race. It is how we become who we are. It is how we cultivate our soul. It is the only truly way to connect. So the next time you are tempted to ask a computer how to apologize, sympathize or celebrate it might be good to ask yourself first.