Why Should Anyone Invest Time Educating Themselves?

TLDR:
Education cultivates potential, self-knowledge, and the ability to do excellent things, leading to a richer, more vibrant, more fulfilling life. Best return on investment.

First of all, what does it mean to be educated? Mark Twain helps us put it in perspective: “Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.” The purpose of education is to cultivate a person’s potential, help them discover who they are, and empower them to create something beautiful in the world.

As such, an educated person is someone who has cultivated a sizable portion of their potential. An educated person is likely still cultivating the rest of their potential too, because the fulfillment one’s entire potential can only truly be achieved upon death. If there’s breath in our lungs, there’s time on the clock, and more can still be done.

Another mark of an educated person is that they know themselves, at least to a reasonable degree, because all knowledge ultimately leads to self-knowledge. But knowing oneself is similar to the fulfillment of one’s potential in that it’s essentially impossible to reach 100%. Like distilling alcohol to a higher and higher purity, we can get to 99% with enough effort, then 99.9%, then 99.99%, but in the end, we condescend to chasing 9’s, and we never reach that perfect 100%.

But the true hallmark of a well-educated person is that they take what they’ve cultivated within themselves, all the potential they’ve made manifest, and they apply it to do good in the world. Their knowledge and abilities are put into action in alignment with who they are at their core to drive forward, to ascend higher, to improve the world around them for their own and others’ benefit. This is what one does when one understands how the world fits together, how it works, and thereby, what fantastic potentials can be made real. And such understanding comes from education.

Let’s use cooking as a simple, universal example: Everybody’s gotta eat or we die, and we’ve gotta eat every day. So, is it better to be good at cooking or bad at cooking?

Obviously it’s better to be good at cooking, but why? Because it’s more fun eating delicious food than food that tastes bad. Because someone good at cooking can control the quality of their nutrition, and it’s better to be well-nourished than malnourished. We feel better, perform better. And cooking can even become an expression of love between two people: you came home late after an especially long day, so I cooked something for you because I love you and don’t want you to be hungry. We can hire a chef for taste and nutrition, and we could even have food delivered for our significant other’s late night, but it’s not the same as making something ourselves for them. Can’t buy love. Learning to cook, the cultivation of that potential, empowers a person to do beautiful things. This is a result of education. Culinary schools exist to cultivate this skillset.

Now, as another simple, universal example: Is there anyone among us that doesn’t speak? Or who doesn’t communicate using language in some way? Extremely few. So, is it better to be articulate or inarticulate?

Obviously speaking well is better than speaking poorly – it’s a huge advantage to be eloquent, to express oneself crisply and sharply at the drop of a hat. It’s fun to be witty and playful with our words and to make our friends laugh with well-timed, good-natured humor. Is there anyone among us who doesn’t like to laugh? Similarly, it’s beautiful for a single person to stir the feelings of countless other people across countless generations with their stories and poetry. It’s beautiful too to be stirred by authors we’ve never met, but who nevertheless evoke from within us all sorts of feelings, who take us on glorious adventures, and who reveal to us different facets of the truth. This is the power of articulation, of the adept use of language, and this can only be achieved through education. Through reading. By learning words, their definitions, grammar, and rhetoric, then by writing. Our words are also a sharp means of defense when attacked with untruths by those who may wish to harm us, and our ability to competently defend ourselves in this way is a source of great confidence.

Now, beneath the immediate, practical benefits of a highly-developed skill (like eating better food and having better conversations), there are other curiosities that develop within a person as they grow more educated. One of the first qualities one begins to notice is appreciation. For instance, if someone had never eaten pizza before, and they finally try their first slice, how can they know whether it’s good or bad pizza? Perhaps they just ate the very best pizza in the world and didn’t even know it. They couldn’t appreciate how crisp and flaky the crust was, how gooey the cheese was, or how fresh the toppings were – they have nothing to compare it to! Or maybe it was the very worst pizza in the world, and now they’ve been tainted for life, never to eat pizza again.

As another example, maybe it’s our first and only romantic relationship. Maybe we don’t know how good we’ve got it and so we take it totally for granted. Or maybe we don’t know how bad we’ve got it, so we stick around thinking that’s just how it works. Without an appreciation for the good, the bad, and all the stuff in between, we’re swine among pearls.

An appreciation for the finer things in life makes our world more vibrant. Food tastes more delicious, art is more evocative, we feel a broader spectrum of emotions and experience life more fully and deeply. Appreciation at its root is the ability to discern between the subtleties. Without appreciation, without discernment between the fine and the poor, without an understanding of the wonderful things all around us, life is pallid and dull. We’re blind watching fireworks, deaf at a concert, dieting in a sweet shop.

We should educate ourselves because through education we live better, richer lives. When we know language well, we can have more beautiful conversations, we can connect with people more deeply and meaningfully. When we know science well, which is the study of nature, we can recognize and enjoy more of nature’s beauty. It’s free, and it’s all around us. When we know math well, we can solve harder problems more elegantly – and life is FULL of problems. But if we can solve them, there’s no problem. Even fighting is an art, the martial arts, the arts of war. They too are technical skills which we can cultivate and develop. And we can use such skills to defend ourselves and protect those we love. Then in that safety, we can dance. We can celebrate and share in the excitement and emotion of this life with others. We can enjoy our time doing what we love well, with the people we love around us. And if they too are educated, then everyone contributes skillful, excellent things, and in short time, we find ourselves surrounded by the good and the beautiful.

Why should anyone invest time educating themselves? Because it produces the best life, and there’s no greater return on any other investment.