It's never too late

An 89-year-old guitar maker is proof that age isn't a barrier when it comes to self discovery.                

               Watch this:
               http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/421509/the-joy-of-a-never-ending-search-for-hobbies/

Will more information help us find meaning? The Borgesian Library of Babel has already alerted us to the futility of this search. But here's another exposition on the subject...

In the Age of Information, Specializing to Survive 

By J. PEDER ZANE       NYT MARCH 19, 2015

Jonathan Haber majored in philosophy at Harvard University. And Yale. And Stanford. He explored Kant’s “The Critique of Pure Reason” with an Oxford don and Kierkegaard’s insights into “Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity” with a leading light from the University of Copenhagen.

In his quest to meet all the standard requirements for a bachelor of arts degree in a single year, the 52-year-old from Lexington, Mass., also took courses in English common law, Shakespeare’s late plays and the science of cooking, which overlapped with the degree in chemistry he earned from Wesleyan in 1985.

Here’s the brilliant part: Mr. Haber didn’t spend a dime on tuition or fees. Instead, he gorged from the smorgasbord of free courses offered by top universities. He documented the project on his website, degreeoffreedom.org, and in a new book exploring the wider phenomenon of massive open online courses, or MOOCs. He didn’t earn a degree — the knowledge may be free but the sheepskin costs dearly — but he was satisfied.

“I wouldn’t call myself a philosopher,” he said, “but I learned as much as most undergraduates.”

Mr. Haber’s project embodies a modern miracle: the ease with which anyone can learn almost anything. Our ancient ancestors built the towering Library of Alexandria to gather all of the world’s knowledge, but today, smartphones turn every palm into a knowledge palace.