Lots of Love for Learning; Sept.05 Recap

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Universal values, universal learning:

‘Oiai e nānā mai ana no na maka.

“While a person is living, treat him kindly and learn what you can from him.”
— Hawaiian Proverb

“He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.”

— French Proverb

“The eyes are of little use if the mind be blind.”

— Arab Proverb

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”

— Greek Proverb

“A questioning man is halfway to being wise.”

— Irish Proverb

“A wise man hears one word and understands two.”

— Jewish Proverb

And you’ve got to love this last one;

“If there were wisdom in beards, all goats would be prophets.”

— Armenian Proverb

We’ve learned so much this month in our ho‘ohana on lifelong learning, and in doing so we have realized that we have barely scratched the surface of the possibilities before us. Truly, we must be life-long learners, continually embracing with hand and heart what mind and spirit will reach out for, good servants that they are of our personal growth.

Perhaps the sweetest thing has been how much fun this has been! A huge and joyful aloha hug to all of you who have written, commented, dreamed and learned with us this month.

In this, our regular monthend recap, I’ll just briefly call your attention to yesterday’s post, Joyful Jubilant Learning, done to index our Lifelong Learning Forum for our Lōkahi Column (to the right) where you can hereafter find it most easily—there are a lot of keepers there, 64 84 and counting!

Let’s look at some other things which have happened this month, just in case they slipped by you.

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Joyful, Jubilant Learning: 64 ways and counting

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Are you ready for this? It’s unbelievably dazzling. The powerful synergy of a learning community, of you. This is what you’ve taught me about Lifelong Learning this month.

These are in no particular order; the numbers are the links to the articles these tasty morsels came from. Click through and savor the feast. Learning is food for mind, heart, and soul.

(1.) Learn from people.
(2.) Take the complex and simplify it.

(3.) Learn that being a learner is a pre-requisite for being a leader.

(4.) Engage in adult learning experiences.
(5.) Understand that observing is learning.
(6.) Grow younger as you learn.
(7.) Give in to wanting something.
(8.) Say yes to more than you normally do.
(9.) Learn mastery.
(10.) Take a leap of faith.
(11.) Learn without the pressure to become expert.
(12.) Understand it is never too late.

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Places, Feelings and Learning. Learning Serenity.

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Preface: There’s an announcement about the October Ho‘ohana at the very end of this post.

Every time I go to a brand new place I seem to return home with some feeling for that locale’s sense of place. It’s sort of an invisible, ever-present to-do list which must be checked off in some way before the visit ends. If not, it feels that my time is incomplete there. Dick Richards and Dave Rothacker very insightfully picked this out about me in their recent discussion after Dick’s review of my book Managing with Aloha. (Again Dick, my mahalo.) In far less complimentary words, my family will chide that’s “one of the things” that is strange about me.

Sometimes the experience is pretty profound, like the day I stepped outside the door of my flight to the Big Island in 1989 on what was to be a short visit, a temporary job to help open a new hotel there, the Ritz-Carlton, Mauna Lani. The last time I’d been to the Big Island had been 14 years before and I’d felt no connection: In fact, I got into a car accident and was med- evac’d off the island in a chopper. However this time, I felt it instantly as I stepped into the island air, and before I even made it down the stairs (Still today, there are no jetways at the Kona airport.) There was this feeling of warmth that had nothing to do with the sun, and this feeling of rightness with the unmistakable pull of belonging. Before I even went to baggage claim I called my husband and asked him how he’d feel about moving to the Big Island to raise our two children there. I had no idea of what would be involved in what I was asking him to do. It was simply the right place for us, the only place, and I knew it.

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Did you know I was gone?

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There was just too much good stuff here keeping you occupied!

Mahalo nui loa (thank you very much) to all the wonderful Guest Authors of our Ho‘ohana Community who have been sharing their thoughts on lifelong learning this month.  I’m fresh off another inter-island hop, so a bit travel weary right now, and I must get some sleep in, but after a much needed head-clearing morning run I’ll be back to post a recap on our September Ho‘ohana on Lifelong Learning. Our community forums are getting better and better, aren’t they?

However I couldn’t let any more time slip by me without saying mahalo to Dick Richards and Dwayne Melancon for the very generous reviews they’ve written for Managing with Aloha on Come Gather Round and on Genuine Curiosity. You’ve had me walking on cloud nine these past two days! I may write other books, but there will never be another Managing with Aloha for me, and to know that it makes the smallest bit of difference to people I admire so much is very humbling, and enormously rewarding. Mahalo (thank you) Dick and Dwayne, and also Dave and Ray for your comments there.

At Come Gather Round: On Managing with Aloha
At Genuine Curiosity: Not what or how – but why?

It’s quite late Wednesday night as I write this. If Thursday has dawned for you by the time you are reading this, do click in to Leon’s Lifehack.org for the fourth Thursday column I’ve contributed there: it’s called On Ho‘ohiki: Keeping Promises.

More from me here later in the day. If I owe you an email response on anything, mahalo for your patience and understanding; I’ll be answering you soon. It’s good to be home.