This is a book created to offer you encouragement to develop the habit of continuous and life-long learning, in order to expand and upgrade your knowledge base. It will help you to create your own comprehension of life and find a purpose to fuel your passion to live a memorable life experience. I have put together this little book to fulfil my desire to share with you some of my views, opinions, and ideas that I believe can enhance the experience of living life. I hope you will find something that makes sense to you which can help you to attain the life experiences you desire to live. I divided my life into two halves, the first, which has just completed was an era dominated by the process of learning to understand myself and then to determine the future I desire. The second era of my life, just begun, will be characterised by the process of sharing what I learned and creating the future I desire. This little book forms one of the early steps I have taken to share with you what I have learned in the first half of my life. It is very much in the spirit of elders sharing with the young the wisdom from their youthful era, and for this reason I consider myself a new elder. The subjects of my passion, which you will find represented by the phrases in this book, include the concept of purpose for being, knowledge for personal growth, life in terms of human activities, and most importantly, the management of self in life for complete wellness. It is my desire that all people can learn basic skills of how to manage themselves in life in order to attain effective living. I believe that life in general is the same for everyone and that what becomes of you is the outcome of your individual choices. Effective living for each of you will be determined by your access to knowledge and response to such. In this book you will find that I give much praise to knowledge as I believe it is the thing that made me who I am and can also make you whoever you would like to be. I created the title "The Evolving Species" to make my life interesting, and I consider it to represent my spiritual or true-self name. You can do the same too, and come up with a name that makes sense to you to give you motivation for life. The concept of The Evolving Species is anchored on the process of learning to acquire knowledge, and to further utilise such knowledge to manage oneself in life, and ultimately create the future desired. The aspect of evolving is based on my definition of education as a process of transformation through the acquisition of new knowledge to become a proactive and action-oriented individual who creates positive conditions of living. In my geology profession, I learnt that different life forms occupy different time-slots of the earth's history, and that now is the time for the human species. I would like to encourage you to use this opportunity to live your life effectively. To do that you must start now to be responsive to knowledge. I hope you will find the ideas shared in this book motivating.
About the Author: Dr. Benson N. Modie is an earth scientist who has served as a geologist in the Botswana Public Service for 20 years. During this period Dr. Modie became intrigued by research on Palaeontology (a study of ancient life forms now preserved in rocks as fossils), utilized in geology to categorise the history of Earth, including that of life-forms such as us humans. While evidence from Palaeontology indicates that many past life-forms have existed for prolonged periods, today's human life-styles of conflicts and struggles clearly point to a short-lived reign on Earth by the human species. It was on this light that Dr. Modie chose to spend the second half of his life promoting human development, through motivational encouragement, in order to influence greater effectiveness among people. Dr. Modie believes that we all have the natural ability to be the best we want to be, either as individuals, global communities or the human species. To this end, Dr. Modie spends his time giving lectures or compiling publications on personal development. His philosophy is that "success begins with you, and the learning process is the first thing".