Lifelong Learning – Sunday, June 14, 1981
Recent weeks have witnessed the annual pageantry of graduation ceremonies—a time signifying the end of formal education. But the young graduates—and some are not so young—will soon realize that they are, in sense, freshmen again—that the good life is a series of learning experiences.
As these newly trained people enter the professional world, they would do well to build careers on a solid foundation of steady learning and steadily developing talent. There are immense satisfactions for the individual whose job is under control. There is only anxiety for the person whose job is not.
If the school and other social institutions have done their work well, graduates will have developed habits of the mind that will be useful in new situations throughout their lives—curiosity, open-mindedness, objectivity, respect for evidence and the capacity to think critically. And if society has created an atmosphere that encourages effort, striving and vigorous performance, the chances are that our young people will expect much of themselves.
Part of that expectation will be to continue learning. Learning must be a lifelong occupation, so that there will be continual self-renewal. And at the same time, there must be educational concern for the eternal man. As one church leader told a college faculty, “…When there is an inner emptiness in the life of man, his surroundings, however affluent, cannot compensate.” When there is a crisis of purpose, nothing will really seem worthwhile or meaningful. When man’s relationship with God has been breached, we will be, as Isaiah said, “Restless as the ‘sea which cannot rest’!”1
The truly educated person knows that happiness does not come from self-gratification, ease, comfort, diversion or a state of having achieved all one’s goals. Happiness involves the pursuit of meaningful goals—goals that relate the individual to a larger context of purposes; goals that call forth the full use of one’s powers and talents.
Graduation is, indeed, a commencement. It is a beginning toward the best life has to offer. The foundation of which is learning, and the summit is true knowledge.
1 Spencer w. Kimball, Address to the BYU Faculty, September 12,1967.
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June 14, 1981
Broadcast Number 2,704