Did I learn anything?

As I think of all the things I've learned in my life that I am still as ignorant as the day I was born.  You would think that a high school diploma, the BA, the MR and the DD degrees I have would make me anything but ignorant, but what was it that prepared me for life itself.

Life on planet earth is filled with challenges and problems that require our utmost attention constantly. We use the things we learned from our parents, grandparents and friends to show us how to deal with life's challenges and problems. But, we cannot learn it all from those family members and friends.  We need the challenges and problems that are directed directly at us to prepare us for solving what ever it is that's thrown at us.

In school, we learned from our teachers and the books we've read and the test we've taken. And over the years we developed a degree of wisdom and knowledge that we've tried to apply to new challenges and problems.  We're proud of our accomplishments and strut around like there is nothing we can't solve.  Then life throws a curve at us that deflates are ego bring us back down to earth and we ask ourselves what happened?

 We soon learn that real life problems are constantly changing to challenge us and keep us thinking and working to be all that we can be.

We have learned that it was supposed to be the job of our parents, our grandparents our friends and teachers to teach us what we might need to know in life. But, did our parent and the others do their job? Did we learn anything from them?  Maybe, but exactly what did we learned?  We may have learned that if we cannot follow the orders and dictates of others, we will suffer for it.  Suffer by have the things that we really need in life keep from us.  What does that mean?  It means that we are expected to do a job and do it perfectly every time or we will loose the reward that we expected to get when we finished. The reward being a pat on the back that says well done, or a pay increase from the company we work for. We also learned that all the work we've done in our life was for others.  Our real reward is the knowledge that we did our best and we did overcome a great number of life's challenges and problems.  We learned that in the end, what we know in our hearts is more important than anything we learned in school.

Do I still believe that I'm ignorant? No, I'm far from being ignorant.  I've learned the lessons that life had for me and I'm proud that I did do my best and I am satisfied that the word ignorance is just a word that has no meaning for me at all.

Remember, we are the sum of what we encountered in life and our reactions to them whether positive or negative.  Being conditioned by life's experiences, we are prone to react to life impulsively and instinctively rather than to respond on the basis of considered judgment.  Man's word and manner of speech reveals his inner life, where his focus is, and who and what determines his peace and joy. (Dr. Herbert L. Fuchs)