I used to think old folks were funny who used to tell me…. “the older you get, the faster the time goes.” There are so many “truism’s” that come back to visit me these days. Now that I am the “old folks” I understand a lot more than I used to. If you don’t understand things now, I can assure you…….down the road a ways it will become amazingly clear. We can’t fully understand anything until we’ve experienced it.

The old stories mom and dad used to tell us about how hard it was when they were young as compared to children in my generation didn’t mean a lot. Now that I am looking at grandchildren and great grandchildren I see their life is perceptively different than mine was. I can’t say it is better. It may be easier in some ways but socially there are pressures I never had. There may be a lot more “gadgets” now that kids have access to but I don’t think they improve learning.

From the small slates and chalk we had at our desks, the ink wells and wooden pens we used, to the calculators and computers…….. learning is still done with billions of little electrodes busy in the brain. To those who want to learn there is no limit. To those who skip out and bypass the process……they learn too late, how important it was. I am considered old now but I still get excited when I learn something new. I hope I continue to learn more with each passing day and make it more than a fact….putting it into practice is the “homework.”

Wherever you are in your journey, I hope you travel with great expectations and accomplishments in your new year. The old year is gone and we enter a place where we can erase mistakes of the past….. and wipe them away as surely as I used to wipe the chalk from my small slate. The key has been passed to a newness of time…….let’s see how good we can make those pages look.

Esther’s journey returns tomorrow.
Essentially Esther