April 5, 2017 - Learn Something New Every Day

Learn Something New Every Day

Happy birthday to me.  I have one year left until I turn sixty.  I read graffiti once that read “I’m fifteen, half my life is gone.”  According to that kid, I have been dead for thirty years.  Age, I believe, has more to do with your mind than your physical age.

Let me share a few things that are different now at sixty minus one from when I was thirty.  I’ve had three goals in life: travel the world, live in a foreign country, and become a writer.  At thirty, I had visited twelve countries, and five of those just airport stops.  I had lived in Bolivia for nearly five years at that time.  At thirty, I still dreamed of writing a book, but I had nothing so far.

At almost sixty, I have visited thirty countries.  I was in Mexico before thirty, but now I’ve been on four other mission trips to Mexico, three other visits, and have driven across Mexico from the Texas border to the Pacific coast.  I have been on a mission trip to Trinidad, plus visited two other Caribbean islands on a cruise.  Before thirty, I was in Greece on an airport stop, but I have been back two times, including taking my two nieces with me one time.  I’ve been on a mission trip to Lithuania and two to Nicaragua.  I have been on two trips to Spain, visiting most of the main cities.  I have had memorable trips to Germany, Brazil, and Romania.  I can conclude that after thirty, I have seen more of the world, more than double of what I had seen at thirty.

The Konigsee in Germany near the Austrian border

At thirty, I had lived in Bolivia for nearly five years.  I didn’t do much while here, though I did see La Paz, Cochabamba, and Sucre.  I have returned at fifty-eight.  I have not seen a lot more of Bolivia, but I have seen it more deeply.  I used to look at the statues around Santa Cruz and think “that’s nice.”  Now I wonder why this statue exists, so I research it.  That research makes me love Bolivia more.

Since thirty, I started writing.  My recently published novel, “Spartan Sisters,” was written in my mid-thirties, and I wrote “Mojón con Cara” in 2016.  I have five novels in various stages of completion and have a list of a dozen more that I want to write.  All of these have been written since I was thirty.  I have to finish those, right?

The last few years of teaching, I taught my students that they should always learn something new every day.  I would always tell them if they come in my class knowing it all, then they are old.  That always shocked them, because they think age is a physical thing.  I always used my grandma as an example of being young.  Until she had her heart attack three years ago, she used to read the bible through two times a year, using a different version each time so she would get a better grasp of what the writer was trying to say.  At fifty, she decided to learn Hebrew, so she could better understand what the bible said in the original Hebrew.  At fifty, I would not have called her old.  At ninety-five, she sleeps and watches TV; she is now old.

At thirty, I thought I knew the bible backwards and forwards.  I knew it all.  Now at almost sixty, I feel I know nothing.  I am in awe at how much there is to learn about my Savior.  I understand why my pastor preaches through a book of the bible and takes so much time doing it.  It took him two years to preach through Mark!  Yes, there is that much to learn in that book of sixteen chapters.

So if you are one of those who think you know all there is to know, I have news for you.  You are old!  I am young and have so much more to learn.  I cannot imagine thinking that life ends at thirty.

Learn more about my novels on my Amazon author page.