A love affair with getting better: the love of your life or an unhealthy relationship?

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“If you aren’t growing, you’re dying, no matter how good you are at what you do.” From “How Eminem Stayed Relevant” on Copyblogger.

I hope I never get to a point where I feel like I know it all. I know that intellectually that’s completely impossible – the very fact that the world is ever-changing means that even if you could know it all, you’d only know it for a millisecond and then have to play catch up again. But what I mean is I hope I never feel like I know it all.

Dennis Cahill at Loose Moose Theatre once told me that if he knew that improv would work 100% of the time, he would have lost interest 20 years ago.

I love that.

Just overlooking for a second what that statement says about improv itself (i.e. that it’s risky, even if you’re super skilled there are no guarantees), I love that this implies that no matter how long you’ve been doing it, no matter how amazing you are at it, no matter what…there is always room for improvement. Always.

I worry sometimes though that I’m a bit too in love with being an eternal student. That is, I don’t have a problem with wanting to learn more, but I fear that I’ll get so caught up in just learning, learning, learning that I won’t actually bother with putting it into practice. Like somebody who attains degree after degree after degree at university until retirement comes a’beckoning.

What do you think? Do you struggle with a fine line between wanting to learn more and just getting stuck in a love affair with educating yourself?

Or is is JUST ME. AGH.

#creativity #education #learning #philosophicalmusingsthatmaybegonowhere