But there is another aspect to one's "life's work." Learning. That's everyone's life's work. No one starts out knowing it all. And at no point in one's life can he or she say, "I now know everything I need to know and don't have to bother learning anything more, nor do I need to re-examine what I already 'know'." Life itself is a learning process, and when one stops learning, one is as good as dead.

The immensity of the Cosmos provides an endless opportunity to provide fascinating questions and to learn about the physical universe we inhabit, and the amazing variety of the manifestations of human thought and experience (in short, culture) means that there will never be an end to new occasions to learn and expand our own knowledge—and, indeed, should make us aware of the necessity to continually re-examine what we think we know. This is not a burden as some suppose. It is one of life's greatest joys!

The problem with a carefully regulated monoculture is that it places a limit on one's chances to experience that human variety and limits one's opportunities to expand one's knowledge. Unfortunately, of course, there are those who find that new experiences, especially those that require them to question and re-evaluated what they have accepted as certainties, are very uncomfortable and unsettling, and sometimes go so far as to try to manipulate their lives and surroundings in order to avoid such disturbances.

But if one is so locked into his beliefs that he stops learning and never re-examines and re-evaluates them, then he or she is little more than an animated pile of dead meat.

Don Firth