The Difference between realization and learning
Why is it important to ask questions? Why do people read? How do we quench that unending curiosity that runs our brain, makes our synapses explode with questions we don’t understand? The more we learn, the more we understand how the universe works. And maybe the realizations that come with understanding the unusual ways in which the cosmos works is what we call Nirvana.
The thin red line between realising and learning
Learning is the process of acquiring knowledge and storing it in our brains whereas realizing is actualizing that knowledge in real life. Learning is the first step towards converting fictitious into reality, actualizing that knowledge into something more.
We learn to answer our questions and realize to question those answers. From learning about the blackholes in the 20th century to capturing its picture in the 21st century is the prime example of the journey from learning to realizing. Realization is integrating the knowledge acquired through learning and making something out of it.
Realizing is internal and learning external
To realize is to understand the importance of something whereas to learn is gaining and processing information from our surroundings. Learning is a stimulus, we see, we observe, we absorb and store the information. Right from pre-school till the time we are old and grey.
Learning is knowing about the Civil War and realising is the black lives matter protests throughout the world in 2020, learning about the plague and the atrocities people faced , realising is when we ourselves go through this COVID-19 pandemic. We need realisations to truly understand what we have learned so far.
As kids we are made to learn all subjects, History, Geography, Political Science, Physics, English, Mathematics etc. But when we grow up and it’s time to choose a major, something we want to pursue and make a career out of, that is when we go back inside our head and realise that we love physics more than other subjects or that we love art more than others and at that moment we realise that this is the subject we’re taking and doing something in this line for the rest of our lives.
We learn about the universe, millions of scientists are trying to find out why we exist ? Are there more people out there? What is the reason behind all of it? They try to find answers to these questions , they learn every day. Realisation is knowing that we may never know 90% of the universe because our brains and technology are not equipped to understand these things and how small we really are in the grand scheme of things.
We gain knowledge by learning but we gain wisdom by realisations. Learning prepares us for the life ahead to an extent and realisations help us get through life. It helps remain in that grey area of right and wrong. Without learning there wouldn’t be any realisations and without all our realisations we wouldn’t really be learning anything. We just have to strike a balance between our learning’s and realisations, who knows we might attain our very own version of nirvana.
