Color Your Life Happy

In an article written by Joe Holmes, a student at George Mason University, he says sitting in classrooms all day brings on learned helplessness. Instead of being out doing, trying out and living, we tell the young to “prepare” for these things. It’s what I call “fixin’ to.”

I heartily agree with Joe when he says

When you’re constantly being told to prepare for life, you slowly begin to think you aren’t ready to live it. You need to wait to be taught formally how to do something before you give it a try. But this is at odds with the reality of life. As I heard (ironically enough) in a quote from my school’s agenda: When it comes to experience, we always get the test before the lesson.

It’s like believing you need to read the manual to your new computer or digital camera thoroughly before you can start using them. Just the opposite is true. You can only learn to use technology by trying them out, making mistakes and finding the solutions. No manual covers every contingency.

My youngest daughter has a theory that a piece of technology should be easy enough to understand without a manual. I think this is the basis of the term “user-friendly.”

By the time we finally understand this need to live life, many of us have squandered our youth in a never-ending state of preparation. We keep taking classes, attending seminars, but never living. Sadly some make it to adulthood never having left the starting gate and as Wayne Dyer says “die with their songs still inside them.”

Don’t let this be you.