This is a very short piece I wrote trying to properly explain my obsession with knowledge and learning, after being asked by my girlfriend why exactly I seek so much knowledge. This piece could be much, much longer, a continuous work that will change with time, as my opinions and objectives change. For now, it's nothing but a short 700 words post exploring some general ideas.
With that being said, I can say that I do it because I seek to understand life. Life can be a lot of things, and I only have mine to live. I cannot go through all the possible scenarios, I cannot live long enough to experience everything and to come up with an answer myself to the question: what's our purpose in life?
Besides that, there are a lot of other similar questions that I could ask, such as "how does life work?" that require an answer.
How can one understand how life works? I don't necessarily mean how it works at an abstract level: what created us, what happens after we die, do we have a soul, etc. I am talking about more earthly things: how can I exist in the best way possible? What can I get to know that will make my life easier to live?
Well, I can start with reading about all (or at least most) of the laws that concern me, depending on where I live. If I live in Romania or Germany, what laws do I have to follow? What laws are in my advantage, and what laws work against me? If I learn the laws of the country I live in, then I can defend myself and my rights, while also keeping myself out of unpleasant situations.
Another question could be "how does money work?"
Where does money come from? What are the best uses for money? What can I spend it on, what can I invest it in? How do smart people use their money? How do they make their money? Unless I learn how to use something that I'll chase for the rest of my life, out of desire or need, then I am bound to make mistake after mistake when it comes to this subject, and be a slave until I die, working for an inanimate thing that governs the quality of my life.
Those are just two out of many questions that I could ask.
Then there's a lot I can learn through reading.
I can learn how to drive a car, and then get out there and get a license with what I learn, this way gaining the ability to travel long distances in a vehicle that is mine.
I can learn a skill, one that I can practice long enough to even become proficient at. I can then spend more time reading and learning so that I can get better. With that, comes competence, and with competence, the ability to serve others. That will help me put bread on the table, take care of myself, my family, and live a care free life.
Through reading, I can take any subject that I am interested in and learn more about it. I can even discover things I might've never thought about before, from ways of thinking, to the effects plants have on our brains, how our bodies work, the chemistry of everything around us, the beginnings and current state of the universe, and so on. Learning about all that can help me in innumerable ways, one of those being my ability to better understand who I am, subjectively and objectively.
Finally, I can learn about life. I already said this. But there's much to learn about it. I can learn to look at it through the lenses of multiple philosophies. I can focus on certain aspects of it and understand them, finding meaning in them, from being a parent and continuing to contribute to the expansion of humanity through procreation, to being a good teacher that shines a bit of light in the darkness that others experience when living. I can learn to look at life through the lenses of a creator, a preserver, or a destroyer.
Reading and seeking knowledge helps me make sense of this abstraction that life is, a series of consequences or coincidences, or a plan put in action by a divine being, an endless search for happiness or the undeniable pain that we'll all experience. For what is life, if not, at least in part, the struggle of our species to understand it and find a meaning for it?
