In his blog, Jack’s Winning Words. Today, Pastor Freed used this quote from poet Robert Frost – “When I was young my teachers were the old. Now when I am old my teachers are the young.” He went on to write – I remember seeing poet Frost read one of his poems at JFKs presidential inauguration.
I guess I must be getting old, too, because I also remember seeing Robert Frost at JFK’s inauguration on TV. At the time, I marveled that I got to see and hear a great poet that I had only read about in school before that. Of course that was back in the day when poetry and literature were still taught in school, along with writing in cursive.
When we are younger we look to older people to learn from, because we believe that they have learned things that we don’t know but would like to know. As we become adults, we look to the people around us who may have already had experiences that we have not yet had. In addition, as we get older we look to younger people because we are sure that they have adopted and learned about new things that we have yet to try – like how to operate our smartphones.
The real point is to keep trying new things, experiencing new things and learning new things. By learning we continue to grow and life continues to be interesting. To stop learning is to just exist; and that quickly becomes boring. Every day we should wake up with a desire to learn something new and every evening we should be able to look back over the day and ask ourselves what we learned today. Sometimes taking that time to think about the lessons of the day is the only way to really understand that you did learn something today, even if that lesson was what not to do again tomorrow.
Maybe you can start your day by adding to your prayers, “God help me to learn from the directions that you take me in today.” Then at night add, “God let me see your hand in the events of the day and learn from them.” If nothing else, stopping to reconnect with God will make it a better day and, who knows, you might learn something, too.
I think this quote from Mahatma Gandhi is a good philosophy to live by – Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
What will you learn today?
NormsMilfordBlog 
As the birthdays come and go, I become more thankful for the teachers I’ve had during my lifetime.