You’re born and your training begins. Your parents teach you to walk and to speak, and to behave nicely in front of others. You grow older and this responsibility is transferred to schools and colleges. You learn math and sciences, language and literature, programming and medicine and data crunching, whatever your academic interests are.

By twenty something, you’re well versed with how the society and the world functions (roughly). You’re equipped with the right knowledge to produce enough value and earn a living. And you know your way through the social dynamics just enough to sustain friendships and get out of tricky situations. Nice, your training paid off!

I call it training because well, someone teaches it to you. All your skills can be accredited to your teachers (from an institution or YouTube). And your mannerisms, behavior patterns, difference between good and bad, are taught by either your parents (if you’re the obedient kind) or your friends (if you’re a rebel). Quite simplistic to put this way, but you get the idea.

So, most of what we’ve learned has been taught by an external source. But I feel that there still remain certain skills and qualities that cannot be taught. At least not in a way they teach you math. These skills must be learned on your own. These qualities must be acquired through inspiration, observation, and reflection.

At school, they can instruct you, train you, teach you. But they cannot educate you. Coding can be taught, but problem solving is learned. Writing can be taught, but thinking is learned. Painting can be taught, but perspective is learned. Learned through inspiration and reflection (and lots of practice!).

Your family can teach you manners and social dynamics. But love, respect, compassion, empathy, kindness are all learned. People with the same kind of upbringing can be vastly different. They were trained the same way, but their personal learning journey, the sort of qualities they picked through observation, was different.

Yogis and Gurus might be able to teach you how to breathe. But they can’t really teach you how to meditate. They can transmit knowledge, but wisdom is grown from within. Buddha had many disciples, but only Buddha gained enlightenment.

Surface level training takes place in lecture halls and dining tables. But true learning happens right outside the cage. When you get the time and space to see the world as a whole, and to see yourself from within. That is when you learn the things that cannot be taught.

💭 Aphorisms

It’s New Year, so I’m bringing a couple of changes to Weekly Meditations. One is this section where I’ll share original aphorisms that I write during the week. What’s an aphorism, you ask?

These are going to be random musings, contextless, and of course, irrelevant to the weekly issue. Here are this week’s aphorisms:

🤔 Makes me wonder

And the other one is this section where I’ll share the blog posts, quotes, videos, podcasts, books, or anything that inspires me. Anything that feeds the curiosity or provokes it. Again, this section is unrelated to the essay.

Today I’m sharing “The Jade Merchant”, a parable on passive learning. Somewhat relevant to this issue, but consider it independent. Do pay attention towards the end cause it ends abruptly.

Now that was something! Lots of changes to Weekly Meditations. Two new sections and now I’ll try to add stock images for engagement. And probably the biggest change is that I’ve handwritten this issue in a physical notebook.

Well, at least to some extent. It was immensely difficult since I’m out of practice and it’s a paradigm shift to think on paper instead of screen. But I kind of enjoyed it. Writing on paper meant I didn’t have any distractions or mindless info. I didn’t check time, I simply thought and wrote. It was beautiful. But, ah well, it was unproductive. I couldn’t make edits, so I shifted back to my laptop to speed things up. I’ll try to write in my notebook still, but maybe need a better process or something. Let’s see…

Did you like this updated format? Do you have suggestions to further improve this newsletter? Let me know by replying to this email or commenting on the website :)

Happy New Year! ✨ 
Aachman