Are you a lifelong learner?
Some people collect jewellery. Art lovers collect paintings. Others collect coins. I seem to collect degrees. One qualification has often led to another, and then sometimes another after that. I now have seven degrees. That makes it sound more deliberate than it was. I never set out to accumulate qualifications. One question simply led to another, and one field of learning opened into the next.
When I become curious about something, I feel a strong desire to understand it. Sometimes that curiosity can be satisfied by a short course at a local college or somewhere nearby. At other times, the questions seem to require something more: a formal framework, sustained reading, good teachers, disciplined research, and the opportunity to test my ideas.
That is usually how another degree began. I did not particularly want another certificate to place on the wall. I had encountered questions I wanted to explore and subjects I wanted to understand more deeply.
People may wonder when I am going to get over this obsession. I hope I never do. The day I stop being curious will be a sad day. Curiosity keeps the world from becoming too familiar. It reminds me that there is always more to understand, not only about ideas but about people, faith, leadership, and myself.
Of course, lifelong learning is not simply the accumulation of information or qualifications. A person can possess a great deal of knowledge without being changed by it. Genuine learning affects the way we think, act, judge, and understand the world. It may provide answers, but it often leaves us with better questions. Perhaps that is why one course has so often led me towards another. Learning does not close the subject. It opens another door.
I have collected a few degrees along the way, but the qualifications are only the visible evidence. The deeper story is a trail of questions, each one leading somewhere I had not expected to go.
The Afterword 
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