The other day I was filling up the ‘quality family time’ meter by reading a story to my young niece, it was The Man by Raymond Briggs, one of my childhood favourites. There is one particular line in the story where one character says to the other “You stick to your education boy. There’s nothing worse than being uneducated… you miss so much in life… it’s like only being half alive.”

For some reason later that night I found myself pondering upon that line. I am far from the smartest person around but I have been through the English school system so I guess I’m somewhat educated. I was trying to imagine what it would be like if I couldn’t read or write, everything I would miss out on, now I would have to heavily rely upon the people around & mostly how trapped I would feel.

Unfortunately the classic saying ‘You learn something new every day’ doesn’t ring true for most of us. Too many of us take our ability to learn for advantage, only using it to learn what ‘so & so’ did in our favourite soap or to learn of the latest football results & gossip.
Learning new things can always be beneficial & in most cases will give you a great sense of achievement, think about it;
– When babies first learn how to walk they try to explore as many places as possible as they are no longer confined to the cradle (not that many people use cradles these days, but you know what I mean).
– When toddlers first learn to talk, they want to talk all the time, because their new communication method is a vast improvement from their old one of ‘cry or smile’.
– When people learn how to drive they tend to find that they can fit a lot more into a day purely because their travel time has been vastly reduced (depending on traffic of course) & in many occasions it opens up a lot more opportunities.

For example you can learn InDesign to create personal birthday cards using your own designs to give to your family & friends. This will be a lot more impressive than buying a ready-made card & will no doubt mean a lot more to the recipient. So whatever the subject may be just get out there & love learning again.