Become Happier and More Fulfilled Through Learning

Knowledge, like air, is vital to life.

Having learned something is fantastic. Sure, the act of learning itself can be, and often is quite enjoyable as well, but it’s nothing compared to the sense of fulfilment you get after just having learned something. To be able to look at a map of the world and name every country, to open a book in a foreign language and understand every sentence, or to be able to automate a boring task with a programming language you recently learned; learning something new does to life what unlocking a new level does to a video game.

I first began noticing this after I started learning all the countries and capitals of the world. When I read the news, instead of the countries mentioned just being “some distant land I don’t know,” they were now actual, tangible places. For example, Ghana no longer is “a country in Africa,” it’s now “a West African coastal country below Burkina Faso, between Cote d’Ivoire and Togo, with a capital called ‘Accra.’” Bosnia and Herzegovina is no longer “one of the countless small countries of Eastern Europe,” it’s “the country located in the ‘crescent’ of Croatia, also bordering Serbia and Montenegro.”

This change in how you perceive something doesn’t just happen with countries. Ever since I read the Wikipedia article on frogs…