This paper explores how Peter Jarvis's work offers a comprehensive grounding in many of the key principles and insights offered through the field of adult education. His work directs us to the different factors--psychological, social, economic and political required for understanding lifelong learning contexts. As scholars and educators, he argues, we can acknowledge the difficulty and reaffirm the promise of lifelong learning to create a better world through our struggles to understand the complexity of human learning processes. The article begins by examining how Jarvis's research on topics such as wisdom and the meaning and purpose of lifelong learning. His analysis of how people learn provides a helpful theoretical and philosophical backdrop for researchers interested in biographical and life history approaches to understanding lifelong learning processes. Using examples from research on fiction writing, the importance of reflective, individual learning and meaning-making is discussed.