“OK, Grandma Jubilee, so, when as an adult do people just decide, 'I'm good – no more knowledge needed?'”
“Well, Velma, this is a hard question. I think most people are loaded with information in the world you live in with the Internet, just like my generation and your parents' generation had television, so their brains don't know they are not gaining knowledge.”
Gladys Jubilee Trent – known as Grandma Jubilee – and her middle granddaughter eleven-year-old Velma Trent were eating barbecue and having a deep discussion.
“Most people are viewing, and undergoing, programming, Velma. The programming becomes the substance of their thoughts, and it works until it doesn't – and then some will actually seek understanding of how to live, and that is when they actually start looking for knowledge, to know what will help them.”
“OK, that's kinda deep,” Velma said. “This doesn't even start in adulthood, then, because there's stuff to learn in school that is information, but not everyone can apply everything to their lives.”
“Right,” Grandma Jubilee said. “That is why making sure every child can read and write and do at least arithmetic and then can learn for themselves – teaching children how to learn – is a lot of what we parents and grandparents have to do at home, because school is also a lot of programming. Not doing the programming leaves time to get actual knowledge. Not that learning the subjects in school are not important, but once you can learn for yourself, you can learn how to choose for yourself what you can use in your life, and what you can leave on the test paper.”
“And maybe what isn't enough and I need to add to with my own learning,” Velma said. “History in regular school tends to ignore about half the people in the United States, as if we haven't done anything but get here, and also, it doesn't tell the whole story about a lot of things.”
“Which is why you are wise to keep learning,” Grandma Jubilee said, “because there is always more to know. But again: you do need to choose what is for you. There's always going to be more information. You need to have knowledge about yourself and what you need to add the right knowledge with it.
“But then, Velma, there is the other part of this – you asked about people who decide to stop learning. That does happen. A lot of people only know learning as school, so when they finish whatever the highest level is for them, they think they are done. Another way this happens: people make a certain amount of money and success with what they are doing, and they figure they don't need to know anything else.”
Velma considered this.
“Pop-Pop is a billionaire and he doesn't think like that,” she said. “Pop-Pop has made all the money he even wants to, but he always is reading a new book.”
“Yes, but here is the deal: he's a billionaire, and that's why – he didn't stop at thinking he knew everything at a million, Velma. A lot of people do, which brings me to the third way this happens: people start comparing themselves and feeling enough superior to other people to think they are so far ahead that they don't need to do anymore.”
“Uh, what?” Velma said.
“Remember the programming, Velma,” Grandma Jubilee said. “If you make an A, you have a better grade than anyone with a B or C, so relative to your class, you didn't need to work any harder for that test – but the thing is, if you don't keep studying, you're going to a new grade with new things to learn, and you will not be ready. In life, people think that if they have more whatever or know more of whatever, they don't need to work harder relative to whoever they are comparing themselves with. But the thing is, life keeps handing out new lessons. Yesterday's test that we pass is not tomorrow's test.”
“OK, this makes sense but it also doesn't make sense,” Velma said. “If I go paint the same tree every day, even at the same time of day, it's always going to be different, so why would anybody think that because today you have more money and status than someone else that you can just sit there and stop learning and be OK?”
“Which is why your grandfather living on earth is a billionaire,” Grandma Jubilee said, “and why your grandfather that you will meet in Heaven never went to college just like me, but we had the biggest library that could fit in our size of home. We are not God, so because we do not know everything, we will always need new knowledge to do the things we are supposed to be doing.”
Velma considered this.
“Do you think maybe people who decide they don't need to keep learning forget they are not God?”
“In the first case, in which people are overwhelmed with information, and even in the second case in which people are tired after years of school, maybe not. But in the cases in which people are thinking about how much better they are than the people around them, maybe, Velma. You just might be on to something there.”