Many graduate…few educate

Well the season is upon us. The cards are coming in the mail and the envelopes are slid underneath your keyboard the minute you step out of your office for coffee. Some of the kids you watched grow while others you barely even know are graduating high school or college.  A few know where they’re heading but most don’t… & 10, 15, 20 years later many still are trying to figure it out.  They don’t know, hell we didn’t either, because we graduated, but were never educated. Graduation is a way of passing, but Education is a way of Life. We graduated by memorization… we kissed up a little, pulled some all nighters, & wrote 7 paragraphs of answers on sliver of paper…we memorized which blanks to fill in, boxes to check, & chapters to read, but damn, nobody taught us about Life…

Education isn’t about what school you got into…clubs you were sworn into, or team you ended up on- that’s just resume material…that’s the shit they write about in your eulogy…

I’m talking about education…

The word educate comes from the Latin word Educo which means to draw out or develop from within. It’s got nothing to do with what’s out there… it’s what’s developed and drawn out from right in here… from within and you, my friend, are in charge of your own education… not Sally Mae, not Stafford… not Mom and Dad…not Grandma’s trust fund…it’s all on Y-O-U.  It’s free to obtain and priceless once achieved. 

Education isn’t about what’s on your business card or title you hold…that shit comes and goes-one minute you’re in and the next minute you’re bounced out.

Now you’d think education is all about memorizing and if that really is the case, then we’ve got that down to a science. Oh how we’ve mastered the art of memorizing. We took memorizing from Mr. Green &  Coach Lewis’s classes and we still memorize to this day. We’re quick memorize all of the mishaps, mistakes, upset, fights, rejections, embarrassing moments, hurtful words, and disparaging actions. We lock in and endlessly play back all of the bullshit moments in our lives decades after holding up that diploma. It’s not about what you’ve done without, it’s what you’ve developed within. There’s too much free and available  to you to just sit there and rote memorization.

You’ve got to take the spice that Life has handed you & make your own secret sauce…Life’s given you ingredients now you make your own recipe. It’s taking what’s been done to what you must do and the first thing you must do is get your ass out there & stop playing so damn limited.  Where you are in not who you are…it’s just a point on Life’s map. Utilize all of the resources available to you and push forward…get a library card. listen to podcasts, start with TED Talks on YouTube…and ask. Ask people who are where you want to be. I ask all of the time… I ask my customers the how’s, why’s, what’s of their lives. And I never feel like I’m prying-you’re not. People devote most of their lives to a certain field so why would they be bothered about sharing what they do and why they do it. Bring the gas of questions to their spark of knowledge and watch that shit blow up.

So congratulate those who are graduating, but mentor others and yourself to forever be educating…developing & drawing out the vastness from within. Graduating has a shelf life…education is your Life. 

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