In my growing up years, my father always imprinted this very phrase upon me day in and day out – “KNOWLEDGE IS KEY”. Certainly in my very early childhood days, I wasn’t necessarily sure of what this meant. I knew that I was curious enough to keep absorbing everything that was happening around me like a sponge. As I got older and wiser (perhaps :)), I started to realize this phrase has so much weight and truth in it; no wonder my father always ensured he would keep this in the forefront for me. And now with my 2 kids right around the phases of “Imprinting” and “‘Modelling”, I have come to appreciate the significance of this phrase all the more and I now ensure to keep this in the forefront for my kids.

So, you’ll ask – What exactly is the meaning of this phrase? Why is learning and constantly growing so important? What would happen if I am no longer eager to learn or inspired to keep growing? Someone asked me once, “I have lots of potential, but “0” motivation- what should I do?”.

To understand answers to these questions, lets dig deeper.

What exactly do we mean when we say “Knowledge is Key”!. Before we answer this, let’s first review the definition of “Knowledge”. According to Wikipedia or a dictionary, knowledge is defined as familiarity, awareness and understanding of someone or something such as facts, skills and objects acquired by a person through experience and/or education. Everything that happens arounds us or to us has some sort of impact on us which we end up retaining in our brains as “knowledge” about it. This could then lead itself to more exploration of that particular thing or instance which leads to additional knowledge of it, or it could sometimes lead to aversion of any exploration which could then close any doors to gaining additional understanding or knowledge of it. In either case, we retain information of that particular instance and we think we have “knowledge” about it. Depending on our own assumption of the knowledge, it will guide your own behavior and attitude of that particular fact, skill or object or even a person. Not having enough understanding or awareness due to lack of exploration will make you vulnerable to staying uninformed about it and reacting to it in a way that may not be appropriate. Having proper understanding and awareness, will lead to guided thoughts and actions about it and you will thus pro-actively know how to react or manage through that instance should it repeat itself! Hence “Knowledge is Key”!

WHY IS LEARNING AND CONSTANTLY GROWING SO IMPORTANT? The simplest answer to this question is “FOR EVOLUTION”. If you want to achieve something in the future, or even if you want to make a better tomorrow than today, you will need to learn and grow your thinking in order to make that tomorrow or that future better than today! Let’s take the example of “The Outer Space”. In the early 1600s, Galileo discovered the four biggest moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. As human thinking evolved, and we look to the 21st century, we have not only discovered additional information on Jupiter and ALL its moons along with all the other planets within our solar system, but we now have a whole sea of information on hundreds of galaxies and other solar systems. How was this made possible? Because of our natural ability to be curious about everything around us and our thirst to gain more knowledge of the physical world beyond our own beautiful planet. If you scale this down to your own self, if you keep that curiosity inside of you lit all the time and you continuously explore, learn and absorb additional information that is around you, you will not only become more knowledgeable about them, but you will also have expanded your thinking capacity, and will have achieved a growth mindset. It could be as simple as self-reflection. Knowing more about yourself today than you knew yesterday, you will have the KEY to make the necessary modifications to your behavior, your attitude, your habits in order to evolve to be a better individual for tomorrow!

What would happen if I am no longer eager to learn or inspired to keep growing? Having explored the need to continuously learn and grow, and to attain knowledge, I think it is pretty clear by now that, if you do none of those things, there will be NO CHANGE and NO EVOLUTION. Having tons of potential and “0” motivation – this is not a problem of the outside world. It is your own lack of self-inspiration and apathy. What good is your potential, if you lack “taking action” on it and you cannot put it to use towards yourself, your loved ones or your community at large? Without knowledge, your growth is stunted. Without the curiosity to keep learning, your life will become a monotonous cycle from which nothing creative or innovative would come out. This not only jeopardizes your own evolution, but eventually could cause large scale damage when the communities and economies around you remain stagnant or worse start to decline. This could lead itself to people either reverting back to tribalism or blindly following something that could be self-destructive.

Taking inspiration from Quran, and our beloved Prophet Muhammad SAW, we know that he always encouraged us to keep reading Quran so you can evolve your thinking and progress for the better. Always think long-term and about your legacy. The verses of Quran help stimulate the brain and serve as a strong inspiration to keep learning, growing and moving in the right direction. I always take this inspiration and would encourage you all to do so!

I will end this by stating two of Henry Ford’s famous quotes and posing a question to you:

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty! Anyone who keeps learning stays young!”

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got!”

How will you appreciate the blessings you have if you don’t expand your understanding?