In a world that’s changing faster and faster, it can feel more difficult to keep up with what’s new. Most likely we all had moments when we felt that life happens too fast. What helps us stay firmly grounded in our lives and the world, is directly tied to what we relate to and understand. That’s an important reason (and hopefully a valuable motivator) to keep learning, exploring, and understanding some of the newness that’s coming at us with each new year.
Make Young(er) Friends. Just like having friends with a variety of cultural backgrounds enriches you, the same can be said for having connections to different generations. Friends your own age can probably relate to you more closely, but they also take a lot for granted because you’re on familiar ground with them. Younger friends ask a lot of questions, which can upset our status quo and get us thinking about things in a new way.
Discover New Technologies. We’ve all seen connectivity expand on our smartphones, laptops, and tablets, but this is true for everything else, too. The next technology wave is well on its way – and it’s important to understand it, decide how to incorporate it into our life (or not). Start with one thing: the “The Internet of Things” (IoT for short) means taking all the things in the world and connecting them to the internet. And yes, they mean everything. (more HERE).
Memorize a Poem. Besides all the obvious reasons to improve our brains in a time of fleeting attention, the best argument may be that it provides us with knowledge of a different quality. We take the poem inside ourselves, into our brain, and we know it at a deeper, bodily level than when we simply read it off a screen. Catherine Robson, professor of English at NYU, says it beautifully: “If we do not learn by heart, the heart does not feel the rhythms of poetry as echoes or variations of its own insistent beat.”
