Never too late to learn.

Those birds again have persuaded me to paint them.

As I have said often before I found learning very difficult in my early days of education, fortunately, it was not the same when I really did want to learn and in that lies the difference.

When I became a teacher I was very conscious of the fact that just because I wanted to teach not everybody before me was going to learn until I discovered how to motivate and inspire students to want to learn.  I also knew that in life there are some who just think they already know and there is nothing they can be taught.

Two very good friends were sitting enjoying an ale together. The news came on the television just above their heads. The broadcast was showing a man standing on a ledge of a very high roof. The police and fire brigade were up there trying to persuade him not to jump.

One of the friends turned to the other, "I wager you ten pounds he jumps." The friend says,,"I will take the wager that he does not jump.'

As they watch the man jumps. The loser of the wager hands over the ten-pound note. The winner says,"I cannot take your money, I saw this on the six o'clock news and saw him jump."  His friend says, "I saw that also but I did not think he would be silly enough to do it twice."

I learned that as a teacher there were stages of learning. In the beginning, you learn the right answers. In the second state you learn the right questions. In the third and final stage, you learn which questions are worth asking. 

To help the process along I always remembered that, tell the student and most will forget. Show me the student and some may remember. But involve the student and most will understand and learn.

Visual lessons are often simpler than just a great many words. My son and I were raking up leaves in the church grounds one day when a flock of geese flew overhead. I pointed and said, "Do you see how they fly in the letter V?"  he looked and thought for a moment, "Clever do they know any other letters?"

So some of the wonderful lessons I have learned through lives experience.

That you cannot make someone love you.
All you can do is be someone who can be loved.
The rest is up to them.

That it takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it.

That you shouldn't compare yourself to the best others can do but to the best you can do.

That it's taking me a long time to become the person I want to be.

That you should always leave the ones you love with loving words. It may be the last time you see them.

That learning to forgive takes practice. 

And lastly and maybe most importantly. That it's not what you have in your life but who you have in your life that counts.

Have a wonderful and remember what my friend Jim has said more than once, Every day is a school day.