Real Life Education
I have been journaling fairly steadily since 1987. I can’t even remember why I began. I can only say that I still journal, although not as frequently as I used to.
I am also an informally educated man. I am retired after working paycheck to paycheck for almost 50 years. I’m surprised I made it this far AND I am grateful to be alive.
Jim Rohn once said, “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
That served me in a number of ways yet I never made a fortune. Self-education was critical to my development as a man and what I taught myself many years ago about finances made me a decent sum of money. What I didn’t learn was that things change and I needed to change with them in order to hold onto it. I was stuck in my old ways, unconscious, and bereft of true knowledge.
In March of 2012, I began another stint of self-education that leads me to this quote for which I have no attribution so I will post it anonymously:
Said from Parent to child:
“If I taught you what I believed to be true at the time, but that is now no longer true, what have I taught you?”
“Teach then the power of truth, change, and choice. This is education.”
Posted in my journal today:
This then, is what I have learned;
From day one I began to grow and die
I was shaped and molded to conform
Some of us break out of the mold, they are doers
Some develop new molds, they are the designers
Some stay in the molds, growing from the pattern or seed
And some of us are dreamers not knowing when to break free
But knowing that freedom exists on the other side of some veil
I never had a child, if I did, I would teach him/her to learn
how to choose, how to change, how to love and
how to let go of everything except for the dream
The dream that connects their life to the living of it.
This then is the real-life education.
