Life Is So Good

I found this excerpt to be very inspiring. George Dawson went back to school to learn to read at the age of ninety-eight, which is amazing, seeing as he walks to school every morning, which most people that age can’t, and then he learns to read very quickly. It goes to show that if you’re determined, you can do anything. I think learning to read was so important to him because he didn’t earlier in his life. I also think part of it was his son’s support. His son, Junior, visits him everyday after school, helps him with his homework, and asks him if he works hard everyday, just like Dawson did for him when Junior was young. Plus, if he hadn’t gone to that adult school, many other people like him who never learned to read would never have joined the class.
    The other students in his class seem to be very attached to him. They like to listen to his stories about things that happened long before they were born, and they do things like show up early just so they can sit next to him in class, and they also sometimes drive him home after a tiring day at the school.
    Dawson is living proof that you should continue to learn throughout your life. There are many, many reasons to continue learning throughout your life. In fact, you have to learn something new everyday, just to survive. You might not even realize you are learning something new, but it’s true. Your brain has to process information every second of your life.  However, if you are consciously trying to learn something new, like a new language for example, you have to work hard to teach your brain to automatically associate certain foreign words with their equivalent in your native language. Anyways, learning throughout your life is important because it keeps your mind in working condition, it’s kind of like oiling a machine to keep it running smoothly, if you continue learning, your mind continues to work the way you need it to.
    Learning all the time is probably what kept the human race around this long. It’s necessary for survival. Humans had to learn through trial and error what would kill them, what would make them sick, and what was safe. Some things took us longer then others, but we eventually figured it out, and look at us now, still constantly learning and improving (or worsening) our lives. If the humans hadn’t learned that we were causing so much damage, how would we learn to fix it?
    I’ve been watching the original Land of The Lost episodes with my sister, and Marshal, Will, and Holly are constantly learning how to interact with their environment. Now imagine being in their situation, trapped in a place you know absolutely nothing about. What’s the first thing you do? You explore, to learn about your environment. You search for viable sources of food, water, and shelter. You try and figure out what threats there are towards you, and what animals aren’t threats. You try to create something like a “home” so that you can sustain yourself for as long as you need to. You never know when someone will come to help, or if they’ll ever come.
    I suppose learning isn’t as simple a subject as it seems at first glance, and it’s quite hard to explain how it fits into our lives on a daily basis, but this old man did, and he’s made himself into a perfect example as to why people should keep learning.

Who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?