What does it mean to be a life-long learner? And why is it important to be one?

Being a life-long learner means looking for the lessons in everything: our mistakes and successes, in the things a child's sees that we so often forget as adults, and in knowing that no one is perfect and we can all always try to do just a little better than we did the day before. It means enjoying, and making a point to look for, every opportunity to learn - an we fact, a new word, or a new skill.
To me it means developing patience: being willing to take the time to find the lessons and revise the way I explain or teach something, even though it would be so much easier to just say the same thing in the same way over and over again. It means revising how I think about the world and learning new ways to think about, well, everything.
This is important to me in learning about myself as a teacher. If I expect the children I teach to get better everyday, how can I expect anything less of myself?