Education

I doubt there is any person whose mother has not said to them at one time or another, "You are what you hang with". There's a lot of truth in that statement. I am not as smart or well educated as some people imagine that I am. However, most of my life I have hung out with people who are smarter and more educated than me. Don't get me wrong. I am no idiot and one can be very educated without necessarily having a degree. In addition, I have known many well schooled people who were not educated at all. My point is that I have been very lucky to have crossed paths with people who were able to mentor me and teach me about life. I have had good teachers and other friends who have influenced me greatly and who have helped shape me into the person I am today. At the same time, I have not just sat around while others poured knowledge into my head. Most of my life I have been a voracious reader. Sadly, these days I am often too tired or busy to read like I used to do. In addition to what I have learned in school or from mentors and friends, I am a student of life. Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, I am observing everything around me and taking it all it. Sometimes I just sit and wonder. I try to learn from the "hard knocks" that life has sometimes given me. Although I am not necessarily the smartest person in the room, I guess I am intellectual in the sense that I am always thinking and pondering. This is part of my introspective nature. I think all the reading, observations, conversations, retreats, mistakes, and intellectual pursuits have made me educated. All of this, whether I realized it or not, was part of my awakening process. There must be a sense of wakefulness in order to have any awareness and awareness is a big part of education.