Expansiveness

In my experience, the more I learn about all the things, the easier it becomes to learn about any single, specific thing.

My understanding of design grew more rapidly after I started looking into fine art, computer science, and publishing.

My comprehension of South American history plateaud until I learned more about the economics of supply chains.

Reading a book about prediction markets helped me better understand my own decision-making process, and reading a journal article about embodied cognition helped me develop a better morning routine.

Learning more broadly tends to help us learn more deeply, because an expansiveness of understanding builds connective tissue between seemingly orthogonal bodies of knowledge. That interconnective matrix serves as an increasingly stable foundation for data, while also introducing new ways of thinking about otherwise siloed, mono-focal pursuits.

This concept seems to apply beyond the world of fact- and skill-based learning, as well.

I find that the more I learn about people—all sorts of people, from all sorts of places, with all sorts of backgrounds and perspectives—the more I’m able to perceive things more three-dimensionally, but also the more appreciative I am of my personal perspective and background.

Being able to place my own experiences into that larger context has helped me realize that what I’ve seen and done and shared and benefitted from has value, even—and perhaps especially—within the larger amalgam of cultural and civilizational experiences.

Said another way:

Many of us think of our own elemental components as the vanilla, basic option, while everyone else’s life-derived wisdom is exotic and valuable by virtue of being different from what we’ve seen and done and learned along the way.

As I’ve met more people, seen more ways of living, and learned more about how folks from around the world, growing up within all sorts of cultures and faiths and historical contexts perceive things—and act upon those perceptions—it’s become clear that not only is my way not the default, it’s also foreign and unusual and thus, interesting and valuable to many people who are not me.

Expanding our understanding and perception, then, can provide us with broader, more stable footing, but it can also help us focus: that larger context serving as a high-magnification lens through which to view the familiar.

Through that lens it’s possible to perceive things we might not otherwise have noticed, including relationships between seemingly disparate concepts and ideas and people, which can in turn help us better appreciate the interconnectivity of everything, and the value of each individual node in that network.

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