The patterns I’ve seen of people learning typically fall into one of two categories: motivated people and lazy people. The motivated people were the “smart” people in school. They were the ones who received high grades, honors, participated in various events, activities, and whatnot. The other category were the slackers and cheaters. These people drag other people down with them.

The difference between the two is that one group of people recognized that hard work yield bigger rewards and benefits than lackadaisicalness while the other group recognized that doing the bare minimum, scraping just barely by, is enough to survive. I guess we develop these patterns early on as children when our infantile brains are trying to make sense of the world and continue developing these patterns as we grow up. People eventually fall into certain same behavioral patterns that characterized by what they remember and how they apply those memories.

Learning doesn’t have to stop after being in an education for some 20 odd years. Lack of stimulation will make you dumb and lazy, but ultimately the motivation for learning is to survive. All we really need is water and food. A domicile, in the basic sense, is not necessary but provides stability for sociality. In a developed, economic society, the lack of skill sets (in a simply put way) leads to joblessness which means no income which means no sustenance.

Some people seem to recognize patterns earlier or faster than others, and these are the people who get ahead in life for better or for worse. Others don’t learn as quickly. It’s hard to tell whether it’s something biological or whether it’s the  presentation of information. Getting those slower ones to learn requires a different methodology, and that’s just another pattern.

Everywhere I go, I keep seeing patterns: traffic patterns, the way people drive, how people talk, how people code, what people write, instant gratification, long-term rewards, movies, media, trends of all sorts, and the list goes on and on. What to do with all these patterns? I guess the appropriate response (but not necessarily required) is to apply what I’ve observed.

After evaluating all the physical things that I can personally do well, it seems like I learned how to connect my body and mind to make them work together. Yet I am still limited given how my brain is wired (which is story for another day). Everything that I have learned to do physically is quite static. If I try to play basketball, where the dynamics of the sport are constantly changing, I will stumble around with dribbling, running around players, passing, and shooting. Even with playing the piano, I learned quickly how to play with my first teacher. With my second piano teacher, it was more refining my technique. It wasn’t until many years later with my third teacher that I finally understood that playing and making music is different. That was when she told me to sing with the piano. With all the physical rules laid out for what my body needs to follow, my mind is capable of handling all the stimuli on the backend. When the inputs start changing faster than my mind can process, my body will shut down and become non-responsive.

This isn’t to say that I couldn’t learn certain sports or physical activities at some point in life. I may perceive them as more difficult for me personally, but much practice and hard work can pay off. Something I find easy to do may give hard times for others. The mental-physical connection that I have is a trade-off in my experience. Thinking too much will diminish my physical performance whereas pure physicality results in lots of failed attempts with no understanding why. The “how” comes easily for me, but the “why” is often lost. What I need to do is start to train my mind to take what I know or learn and apply that in more creative and expanded ways. It’s not an easy process being rooted so strongly in rules, but at least it’s a fundamental base to start with as things usually go.