What Learning Do We Need to Live?

The educational fervor of Korean society is well known worldwide. President Obama while in office praised the Koreans for their educational aspirations. However, the excessive zeal for college entrance, competition, academic cliquism and the like are reasons for some of the headaches and problems in society. The understanding of learning in society can't be ignored—beginning words of an article in the Catholic Times by a priest sociology professor.
 
What is the learning we need in our culture? What we thought important and searched for and what we need to jettison is something that we need to look at very humbly, he stresses.
 
The word for learning in Korea is made up of two words—learning that has become part of oneself. However, in reality, it's what teachers have learned, transferred to the heads of others, without being digested. Consequently, no matter how impressive and elegant, in a short period of time, it disappears. It hasn't been transformed into wisdom. It's when what is learned (knowledge) becomes part of our lives (wisdom) that we have valuable learning.
 
During the 500 years of the Joseon Dynasty when Confucianism was ascendant and family rites and disputes about tradition were common, we had an alienation from daily life, a way of thinking deeply embedded in society. The emphasis on ritual and the traditional community had many beautiful qualities but with the scholar, farmer, craftsman and trader division of society: holding up the scholar and the examination tradition that made it possible are leftovers in the cultural memory.
 
Society with its never-ending competition remains unchallenged, giving birth to fatigue, anxiety, and strain that continues into the future, only makes the colleges and universities places to prepare for a job. Not a place to search for truth, wisdom and learning about life and its meaning but to get the tools for a future job.
 
We all have desires of many types, a very natural and complicated reality. The flow of the culture only increases this natural desire. The economy is not doing well, and we are living in uncertain times, earning money, getting a job, getting educational credentials, finding success is the ever-present thirst and desire. The desire of parents and of all of us will make us Zombies and we will fail to find peace. All of us want to be recognized. We are all invited to the spiritual life—a life in search of wisdom.
 
The desire to show others that we have succeeded will be there, especially if we have scars from our early years, but the spiritual orientation gets rid of the worldly aspects and directs our eyes to God and the search for wisdom. No longer wanting to do better than others, but trusting in God's love for me and the happiness he wants me to have.
 
Thinking that education, wealth, and honors, without God and with our efforts we will be living the comfortable life is nothing more than reverie. With  God in the picture all the scars are healed and
feelings of inferiority disappear.
 
The writer finishes his article mentioning that he has lived 25 years in a religious community and has experienced God's mercy many times over the years. He felt the lack of learning, and has had difficult times over the years but he can still say in prayer: "If I should die today I do not feel I am missing anything" because of God's mercy, it's a prayer that comes from deep inside his heart.  He will never give up on the road of learning that he has traveled.