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2022: Creating a Lexicon of Future
Field Guide to Flourishing: U is for Unlearn
When we unlearn, we clear the space to receive new information, effectively refreshing the screen for our ever-curious brains.
Learning something, if you’re actually interested in it, is pretty much always something enjoyable. Learning some things takes longer than others (though not to confuse learning with mastery, which can take a lifetime), but we do learn something every day.
Unlearning, however, is something quite different. You might be forgiven for thinking it means knowledge just disappearing from your memory, like the way your University degree in German is reduced to you frantically gesturing at a sandwich in Hamburg just 10 years later and hoping they understand that you want to buy it.
It’s not that. Unlearning is challenging and deconstructing things that are embedded in your way of thinking, acting and reacting. There are a lot of metaphors for unlearning. Chipping away at the old paint before you put on a fresh coat. Clearing away the vegetation before planting something new.
They all point to the same thing; the previous ideas, beliefs, assumptions, etc, must be completely removed for the new one to flourish. They cannot overlap, just as one must eradicate all of the old roots before planting new flowers. ~ Learn, Unlearn, Relearn
