The Most Important Skill in Life | What You and Your Children Really Need to Learn

AVAlexander Volchek

We live in a world where a person can study for ten years, acquire a profession and experience, and then discover that everything they prepared for has changed. This concerns not only you, but what you teach your children today and the life you are trying to prepare them for. In this episode, we will explore what remains important when knowledge becomes outdated, experience does not guarantee results, and the future cannot be calculated. How do we understand what a person should really learn?

OSOlga Stolyarova

What do you think? What is your view of this? Which skills will matter more than knowledge in the age of artificial intelligence, with everything developing as it is? Or will skills not matter, while particular knowledge does? What should people focus on in this rapidly developing and changing world?

AVAlexander Volchek

The word “skills” is itself deeply shaped by society. By separating skills from knowledge, you have already adopted today's social paradigm. That discussion never ends; it has been going on for decades: knowledge is not what matters, but experience, or skills. I do not think the issue here is whether skills or knowledge matter more. What comes first? When is knowledge alone insufficient, and when is it enough? Imagine a snake. To avoid being bitten, you may only need to know not to approach snakes, or to know their species. Rattlesnakes sometimes move around near our house; I know what they look like. There is also the California kingsnake, which can bite but is not dangerous or venomous. Does that mean I will approach a California kingsnake but not a rattlesnake? No. When you see a rattlesnake, you are a little more afraid than when you see a California kingsnake.

Actually, you are equally afraid, but you do not approach either one. Do I need the skill of interacting with these snakes—to be bitten by a rattlesnake a few times, then by a California kingsnake, gain experience, and learn how to grab its head? Practice catching it as it strikes so it cannot bite me? I do not need that skill at all. I need the knowledge that I should not approach a snake. A two-year-old does not have that knowledge or understanding. Some forty-year-olds will say, “It is fine; I can walk very close to a snake and it will not do anything.” Just do not approach it, and you will be fine. Knowledge is enough here. This endless modern discussion about constantly studying or needing experience somewhere is empty rhetoric. We see many false assumptions: people think completing a university placement or taking a job will give them experience that helps them work, sell tomatoes at a market, start a business, or do something else.

That experience may help and have a positive effect, or it may distort their perception of life. Do people really ask for experience before having children? “Let us have five for practice, then everything will go wonderfully with the sixth, seventh, and eighth.” It does not work that way. There is no consistent pattern. I have four children, and there is no pattern. All four are incredibly different, though they have the same father and mother and seem to grow up in the same environment. It is not only their physical bodies that are very different. Take the girls: they differ in appearance and everything else, including their decisions, approaches, and actions. They are different inside. It is not just boys picking up sticks and chasing one another; girls do that too. Of course, there is a clear difference between boys and girls. But when we ask what matters more in today's world, we arrive at a specific question: what does “more important” mean? What are you basing that on, and why do you want experience, skills, or knowledge?

What for? That is the fundamental question. What do you want to achieve by finding out whether skills matter more, and which skills matter most today? Everyone asks which skills matter. Why do you want to know? That matters more than anything. Otherwise, we fall into the same trap of misreading causes and effects as when we say experience is needed to raise children. I know many people with lots of children who are terrible parents. They consider themselves terrible parents, and they are—terrible in social terms. Which father is better: one who spends a lot of time with his children but drinks every day, or one who never sees them and does not drink? Which mother is better: one who spends all her time with her children in a state of endless selfishness and power over others, or one who spends less time with them but lives entirely through love when she interacts with them or is nearby? She may work three jobs and have little time for her children, but she relates to everyone with love.

She sees every person as a person and relates to them with love. Which parent is better at raising children? When we say “better,” what criteria do we use? Is a good father the one who made a lot of money or the one who spent many hours with his child? Who is better or worse, and what are we evaluating? Which mother is better: one who found professional fulfillment, recovered quickly after giving birth and went back to work, or one who spends a lot of time with her child? The mother who says she suffers while spending time with her child, or the one who says she does not? Who is better, the one who suffers or the one who does not? That is a big question, a separate, major subject for study and analysis. Which person is better here? So when we approach the subject of skills for the modern world, we first need to determine something for ourselves. Think of how people decide what their children should do.

I see so many parents preparing their children for a future profession almost from birth, so that they can find fulfillment and take their proper place in society. Olya, imagine a child is born who is destined by their karma to die at sixteen. All right, let us say twenty-five, not sixteen. Twenty-five or thirty; let us push the date back a little. They are to die at thirty. Imagine the parents know this, not because the child is sick—the child is not sick—but because they understand the causes and effects in people's lives. Would that knowledge change how they make decisions about raising the child, communicating and living together, what to do, which university, teachers, or school to choose, which textbooks to buy, which activities to sign up for, how to dress the child, and what to teach them? Should they teach the child to use a knife and fork? If the child will die at sixteen, twenty, or twenty-five, should they teach that or not?

Should they explain how life works? The key question is whether your life would change if you knew this. Adults are often asked, “If you were going to die in a hundred days, what would you do?” Would you do what you do now, or something else? I do not mean practical arrangements such as giving your spouse the passcode to your phone, credit card, or bank account, transferring an asset, or arranging a power of attorney. Set those social matters aside. What would you do with your life now? Would you spend each day exactly as you do now, or differently? Olya, what would you do if you knew you would die in a hundred days? Would you keep filming my videos?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Yes. I would just change the location.

AVAlexander Volchek

Do you think you would keep working in the same way?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Yes, with you, yes. I would need time to accept that I would die in a hundred days. Though I do not know; I think it might be easier for me.

UPUnidentified participant

I think it might be easier for me.

AVAlexander Volchek

Why do I doubt whether you would continue? I can imagine a self-interested motive: you would realize it was important to prepare for the transition and begin discussing it with me. Perhaps I would be the only means you trusted to learn about it and prepare properly during those hundred days. But that is a different task from coming to work to make videos, write briefs, think about whether a Reel will take off, or make a Short. It is different work. You would continue interacting with me, but not doing your current job. That is why your answer gave me pause: would you really continue doing the same thing? Notice the fundamental human task I identified here, if someone knows they will die in a hundred years—a hundred days. In fact, it is the same fundamental task if they will die in a hundred years. Isn't that remarkable?

It was no accident that I said a hundred years instead of a hundred days. What is a person's task? To know their own life and understand what happens and how. Knowing your own life is the most important thing you can do. Why emphasize understanding what will happen in a hundred days? You have an opportunity to concentrate. Honestly, it will not help that much with developing your spiritual system and so on, but there is an opportunity. If a person asks that question, perhaps they are ready for those energies, ready to do, observe, or experience something. The fundamental task is to relate to it calmly. What difference does it make whether it happens in a hundred days or a hundred years? When I say “a hundred days,” you focus: “What do we do now?” You immediately remove many of the things you currently regard as problems in your life.

You remove one of the biggest problems of our time: you know exactly when you will die. Then you remove worries about money in old age or ten years from now. Gone. You immediately said, “I would change where I live.” Someone else might say they would move to the ocean, a forest, or somewhere else. What does that mean about your current experience of life, that you need to change your location? It may seem the answer is to move. Someone at a training session might say, “Then move now,” and assign you that task. But changing location does not resolve your question. The only solution is to understand where you are now and relate to it as you would to another place, while recognizing that you may like the other place more. Of course I would prefer a location with a beautiful view, a lovely interior, everything wonderful, to one where the street smells like shit.

Of course I would like the more pleasant location. We are human. Would I like a place where missiles strike and buildings explode? Obviously, I would prefer a place without missiles. No one is taking that away from you. The question is how, in a place where missiles strike or something smells unpleasant, to experience it as part of your life.

OSOlga Stolyarova

Something interests me here. When you asked about dying in a hundred days and I said I would change location, you seemed to take the discussion toward the usual wish to go and sit by the sea, as in the movies. But the place I meant is not somewhere I would want to be right now. It is not a particularly pleasant place for me. Is that the same thing? Is it the same energy as wanting to move somewhere better according to external criteria?

AVAlexander Volchek

Essentially, yes. You are reasoning from the idea that it matters, that location is important or necessary for you. We can examine individually what you mean: a country, a room, an entryway, a city, the language people speak, the actual people around you, or the air. There are emotions associated with it. You considered going to your parents, for example. Many people would not consider that. If you told me to do it, I probably would not immediately think of going to my parents. Why did that idea arise for you? What is the feeling, and how much are you missing in your interaction with your parents now? You are under the illusion that you can experience it all in your last hundred days. To do that, you would arrive and tell them about the hundred days, and they would become caught up in their fears.

They would be focused on their fears and distress, not on you—on you a little here and there. You would be in the middle of that whole mess. Do you really need it? In relating to your parents, you need to understand that what you can do is share your lives and build that relationship now. You do not need to visit them or wait for a special occasion. Special occasions will not help. That is why many people become ill or follow very different paths: to experience this and see that a special occasion is not needed. Some earn money for that reason, or do not earn much money, then engage with their parents and see that it does not fix the situation. Or life uses money to help them experience a meeting or interaction with their parents—but they could have done it without money too. This is a powerful aspect of it, a way to see the many places where you live in fear or misconceptions.

Those fears and misconceptions are inside you. Then you want to make drastic, complicated changes. I recently told someone, “If you were going to die in three months, you would not even call your employer. You would simply disappear from work.” They said, “Probably.” Yet it is difficult for them to believe, because they think their work is so important and necessary. Is it, or isn't it? The point is not to work less, but to recognize the truth. That is why I asked whether you would really continue doing your work, or would want to use certain opportunities instead. This is the sense of life as something ordinary, normal, and natural, where your day does not change. Essentially, happiness is when your day does not change. Of course, there may be circumstances—a place you wanted to visit or a person you wanted to see.

A few circumstances might shift, but only small things. Even then, can you accept living peacefully without them? Being able to live without them is what matters. You do not control it: you could die tomorrow, go to prison, have flights shut down, or become ill. Anything could happen to the other person tomorrow. They could stop wanting to see you. You decide to visit your parents, and they say, “We do not want you to come.” Then what? How would you feel? Freedom lies in understanding that this too is normal and natural. Your parents might have lost their minds, or they might simply be busy with other things. You have the right to meet or not, call or not. Why don't they? Why must they always be open to you and ready to welcome or see you at any moment?

Who said they owe you that, when you often do not do the same yourself? That is a powerful answer. I recently came across a good description by either Krishnamurti or Rudolf Steiner: some people, even if placed in the world of angels or archangels, would start looking for stains on their clothing and focus on the stains instead of where they were.

In this example, a missile is a stain on the clothing. That is why we see so many unhappy people in apparently paradisiacal places, and many happy people in the opposite circumstances. All the world's happiness rankings are false. What criteria and parameters do they use? How many people do they assess? What do they actually study, how many questions do they ask, and over what period? How did you really evaluate it? What was the scope of your research? Perhaps people deceived you when they answered. Could your entire sample have deceived you? How would you check? They may not even have intended to deceive; it just happened. At that moment, for some reason, they could not answer differently. Think of how many people we have encountered. I have conversations like this every day. I ask a question and someone answers “A.” I probe further and they answer “Z.” I ask again and they answer “Orange.”

I probe further, and they answer “Minus six.” I ask what that has to do with it and point out that A, minus six, orange, and Z do not form a coherent system. They are disconnected and contradict one another. The person stares at me: “What are you talking about?” I say, “You just said you both love and hate your children.” The point is to relate to that calmly and understand that both love and hate are present. Tell yourself, “A state lives in me that expressed itself this way here, and another way there. I understand that in one situation this skill helps, in another that skill helps, and in a third a different skill helps.” Then we ask why: “Why do you want to know which skill will help?” The person says, “I have a child.”

For example, my daughter is fifteen and a half, and in two and a half—two years she is expected to go to college. That is the usual expectation. I recently told my mother, “In two years my eldest daughter will leave home, freeing up space. She has two rooms without doors between them, even her own exit to the outside. We will redistribute the space a little among the other three children.” My mother said, “Well, God willing.” In an interesting way, she set the whole thing aside so she would not even have to think about it. But this is not about planning; it is about her existing life. She does not even want to engage with it. Could my daughter stay and live with me for the rest of her life? Easily. I might become ill and she might care for me, or she might become ill, or something else might happen. She might decide not to move and live with us for ten years, decide not to enroll anywhere, or attend a local community college.

There is a college in Los Altos Hills where she could enroll and study. You can get a perfectly good education there by global standards. It would not be Stanford, Yale, or MIT, but it would be a good education. In general, children tend to leave home, so you make a forecast, recognizing that it is one possibility and things could turn out any number of ways. When we ask which skill is needed, what are we preparing for? When you ask me this question, understand what I am preparing for and how I approach it. I consider what knowledge or skills a person should acquire from one perspective only: how should people live, and how does life work? We then examine living in accordance with the laws of the Universe and how to treat other people. What matters is not how much money someone makes, where they work, their profession, who their spouse is, whether they are divorced or married, in their fifteenth marriage, have sixteen children or their first, cannot have children or have had one.

Whether they live in the United States, Belarus, Italy, or on a small island, become a monk or a president—it makes no difference. What matters is how they treat people, how they learn about life, listen to it, understand and perceive its causes and effects. How much do they want to know and understand life, observe their own life, and understand others' lives? How strongly do they seek to know their own life? Then we move beyond the discussion of skills and experience. “But, Alexander, surely you still make decisions about your daughter's math or language exams, or her choice of a profession?” Of course. But the number-one skill people need in life is how to relate to others, how to hear and listen to them. Not to make money, though believe me, it helps greatly with that. If you can listen to people and understand causes and effects, you will make far more money. You will not have that problem.

Within your own life, you will earn money where there is an opportunity to do so. At least a lack of knowledge will not keep you at the low end, and you will not fall into traps you could genuinely have foreseen, as with the snake. You will know certain things in advance: can you deal with this person at all? Can you hear what matters most to them? You go to a restaurant and ask a server, “What dish would you recommend?” What kind of question is that? Do you know their state? Perhaps they want you to die, get food poisoning, or be dissatisfied. Perhaps they want the largest possible tip and bill, are working under a bonus system or management instructions, want to set up the restaurant or you, or are simply in a bad or very good mood. It matters. You would not ask that question of someone who is irritated, in a bad mood, not thinking clearly, or occupied with their own concerns and has not recognized or seen you.

Look at the person: are they giving you a stock response, or truly engaging with your perspective? How do they communicate and speak with you, and why? You can examine this in any YouTube video, with any teacher at a university or school, any parent, your own parents, or your own children. What goals does the person you are talking to have right now? When you can recognize that, things become easier. Yesterday we had a funny moment. My wife, daughter, and I were out in a pedestrian shopping area. I said, “I am about to go on a trip, and I am missing a suitcase, an expensive one from a premium collection.” At that moment, my wife did not start thinking about what I meant or why I raised the question.

Ideally, someone hearing that would consider what I meant, ask why I thought so, and help me resolve the question. We had just been in a store where she tried on glasses, and I saw those glasses appear on her head as she was thinking. We turned it into a joke. I said, “Why did glasses appear on your head just now, instead of my suitcases?” She laughed: “It is as if you read my mind.” I said, “I did.” Then you calmly carry on, understanding that there is no need to discuss the question further with my wife, because she is not interested in it. At that moment she was interested in her glasses, and she had every right to be. But discussing my question with her then would lead me to a false conclusion, picture, and decision. It is the same with a schoolteacher: “Marya Ivanovna, what profession should I study for?” Or asking your father what profession to choose, a trainer which course to take, or watching a video.

Does the person on the other side actually hear you? Are they speaking for you or for themselves? What is their advice based on? Are they trying to impose a particular program on your life, prove to everyone how life works and that it can only work that way, or genuinely help you find a solution? If you see someone who will die in ten years, you will give them different advice. So what matters more? What should you learn, and what should you do? Imagine how the recommendations and actions change. We are living people; every life matters. This is not an A/B test for fun where you make a mistake and say, “Sorry, I was wrong,” as doctors and teachers do while broadcasting the same information to everyone.

“Sorry, we were wrong.” Or, “You just acted differently.” Of course I acted differently: I am a different person. I could act differently, and you did not account for it. You did not say that could happen; you said it could only happen one way. Always reason this way when thinking not only about your own future, skills, and knowledge, but also about others' skills and knowledge when giving them advice. This is the only thing that can save your life.