Keep Learning!

I love learning. Even the subjects in school I struggled with, I didn’t hate. There’s always been a desire in me to understand the things around me and in me. Why do things work the way they do- in nature, in technology, in machines & tools, in my body?

As an adult, I’ve grown to enjoy even more learning; especially history and science. Once, years ago, while perusing the public library for cookbooks, I found one on old Shaker cooking and found some old recipes for pie plant. It was actually a few years later that I discovered what pie plant was (this was before the internet), rhubarb. Another book I found at the library was about how people cooked and preserved food before the advent of refrigeration. The things people had to do and had learned to do to keep from getting sick from food poisoning were interesting and its a shame, we’ve lost so much knowledge and come to depend on our technology to do things and even think for us.

Our family inherited an old set of encyclopedias years ago, when my children were young, and as a lover of books and of learning, (and again, before the internet), even though they were outdated in some things, we still found them useful, especially while we were homeschooling. But after the advent of the internet and purchasing a home computer, the hard copies of old outdated encyclopedias seemed to be wasted space on the bookshelves, so we eventually gave them away. I now regret that.

This last year with the virus pandemic and shutdowns and so many sources of news limiting information, I fear that we may eventually lose the ability to research and find all the information that’s currently available to us online. Even certain books are beginning to be “banned” from reading lists and websites. If you can’t find the information you’re looking for, maybe it’s time to try some alternate search engines. One I’ve recently started using is https://duckduckgo.com

So I’m reading as much as I can and learning all the skills I’m interested in and finding good books about them and creating a library of the things I want to know and have access to, no matter what may come.

Some of the things I enjoy are cooking, gardening and preserving. So I’m adding to my knowledge of canning, freezing and dehydrating, by learning other ways to preserve foods as people historically did by having a larder and cellar for keeping foods through the winter. I recently bought a new (old, originally published in 1911) book on gardening and have already begun implementing some new methods for this year’s vegetable garden. Another gardening concept I’ve been learning about in the last few years is Permaculture. There are many websites to speak on this and a great book is Gaia’s Garden. https://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Guide-Home-Scale-Permaculture/dp/1603580298/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&hvadid=78615135510552&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&keywords=gaia’s+garden&qid=1614861952&sr=8-2 This is an excellent beginner to intermediate book on the principles of permanent agriculture and how it has been and can be used.

Health has always been a priority for my learning. Keep in mind, we don’t need to believe everything in print. I have wrong ideas- everyone has some wrong ideas, or at least ideas that don’t work for everyone. So whenever you read, always be evaluating; does this fall in line with your belief system? Your own experience?, etc. For example, one book I highly recommend is called Younger Next Year https://www.amazon.com/Younger-Next-Year-Strong-Smart_Until/dp/1523507926/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1614856653&sr=1-1 The book was highly motivational to both myself and my husband for just moving more and making exercise a priority; however, I disagree with the authors’ stance on evolution in the book. But that doesn’t negate the value of the principles of movement and exercise. So we don’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater” so to speak.

Some other ways of learning for me have been documentaries. Now I’m generally a movie lover. For me a movie is like watching a book. But occasionally I’ll watch a documentary on Netflix or some other internet site. I have to admit, usually the times I watch documentaries are when I’m sick and can’t sleep in the night. I’ll read an informational book any time, but to sit and watch a documentary can be tedious when there are so many things to be done. I digress. One of my favorite documentaries was one I was able to fall asleep to years ago, when I was sick and couldn’t sleep in the night, and it was so good that the next day I had to rewatch the whole thing and made my sons watch it with me. https://www.foodmatters.com/films/food-matters Back then it was on Netflix and it may still be. This documentary makes you want to go to the grocery store and buy all the fresh fruits and veggies! Again, evaluate your beliefs and even your own body. This film encourages vegetarianism, and while I don’t practice that, I do agree we all should eat more fruits and veggies. Vegetarianism definitely improves some peoples health, but not everyone. Everyone has different body chemistry and genetics, so not all things work the same for everyone. Another good book addresses some of these issues is Eat Right For Your Type; https://www.dadamo.com . For the 2 different blood types found in our family, we’ve definitely found some things to be true in this book for us. This is a good theory on why some people can eat things others can’t.

Back to the Food Matters documentary; there were a couple of people who were frequently speaking and I decided to look up the one guy- Dr. Andrew Saul. He has a wonderful website that is completely free and he has written or recommended many books (most by medical doctors) on nutrition and disease. His articles, some written by himself, others written by other medical doctors, explain known causes and nutritional ways to help the body get the components it needs to heal itself. Cause that’s what the body does; it heals itself. My son had a professor for physiology once, who stated that if the human body gets all the nutrients it needs, it can heal from anything. I have found Saul’s free articles helpful for many things, including helping my husband heal from kidney stones. That website is: http://www.doctoryourself.com By the way, he doesn’t sell any supplements. He earns a living selling his books and speaking.

I am currently 52 years old and still doing marvelously well. Do I always eat the best foods- no. Do I have some excess weight I should lose- sure. But my quality of life is very good still. I have some arthritis in some of my joints and I’m not as limber and agile as I once was: there’s still room for improvement! My son, the fitness trainer, keeps me learning to push myself physically so I can stay strong longer. My husband pushes me mentally to think things through more before just jumping into anything I get excited about.

So to wrap up this fairly long ramble- keep learning in every way we still have available. Use the internet, books, videos. Take classes for the things you’re interested in. Surround yourself with people who encourage & motivate you to better yourself. And then go out and live your best life!