Expand the Boundaries of Your Mind

If your goal is to become an engineer, a lawyer, or a medical doctor, your study path is mostly decided for you. There are required subjects you must take, with a few subjects that you can choose yourself. You pass the required tests and, one day, you become a professional. Of course, if you want to remain good at your profession, you will continue to study and learn from your experience.

But there is a danger in learning only what your profession requires. We may become very good at one thing while knowing very little about the world around us.

How Interesting Do You Want to Be?

If all you know is the knowledge connected to your profession, how interesting will you be to people who know very little about your work? And who wakes up in the morning and decides, “I want to have a narrow mind”?

With this in mind, why not explore subjects that you would normally not study? The goal is simply to make your world a little bigger.

Don’t Be Afraid of What You Don’t Know

It is almost always amusing when someone calls Africa a country. But when people make this mistake, they may also show that they do not know very much about the world outside their own experience. The fact that Africa is a continent is not difficult information. It is something that most educated people are expected to know.

Of course, we all have gaps in our knowledge. The important thing is to recognize them and try to fill them. We should not be afraid to discover that there are many things we do not know.

Look Beyond Your Usual World

Imagine someone who only reads about fashion and entertainment. They may enjoy those subjects very much. But what might they learn if, from time to time, they also read about science, history, or business? At the very least, they will learn new words and ideas. They may also discover ways of thinking that they have never considered before.

Likewise, if you love art and music, what might happen if you take an interest in biology, chemistry, or physics? You do not need to become an expert. You do not even need to study these subjects deeply. Simply taking an interest in them can make your world much bigger.

Expand Your World

Imagine living in a house with many useful appliances but not knowing how to use most of them. You could still live a happy life, but think how much more interesting life could be if you understood how to use all those tools.

In the same way, we live in a world filled with different kinds of knowledge. We should certainly work hard to master the subject we choose for our profession. But we should also make time to explore other subjects.

Our vocation may be the work we do for a living. An avocation is an activity or subject that we enjoy outside our main work. Perhaps developing an avocation for learning about other subjects can make us not only wiser, but also more interesting people.

We do not have to know everything. But perhaps we should try to know a little about many things.

Written by Everett Ofori