Learn. Quit Thinking.

jaykoolaid vvvvarrrn

Life teaches us things as we get older.  If we are lucky enough to be willing to learn.

Things like…. Reno, Nevada is further west than Los Angeles, California.  I only know this because I like to read maps.  You can learn a lot from maps.  Like… where stuff is.  You would think that as much as I read maps, I wouldn’t get lost as much as I do.  But I think it has to do with the fact that I’m often preoccupied with grinding my teeth.

Yes.  Life teaches us as we grow older, and this is a good thing.  Take Ben & Jerry, for example.  They weren’t born knowing how to make ice-cream.  No sirrrreeee bobby.

They learned how to make ice cream by taking a $5 correspondence course offered by Penn State. (They decided to split one course….. so $2.50 each)  Now that is some serious Tutti-Frutti for you.

Tutti-frutti tastes nothing like fruit to me.  Although, it has been a LONG time since I’ve had Tutti-frutti anything.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had Kool-Aid too.  Which, by the way, was first marketed as “Fruit Smack.”

I always think of the Jim Jones incident in Jonestown, Guyana (1978), where 900 people died from cyanide poisoning, from drinking the Kool-aid.  It could have been from drinking Fruit-Smack if Edwin Perkins (the inventor of Kool-Aid) hadn’t switched his marketing ideas.  I think in the Jonestown incident, Fruit-Smack would have been more apropos.

See the things we learn as we get older?  Don’t follow cult-leaders, and don’t drink the Fruit-Smack.

Instead, eat at Ben & Jerry’s.
You are catching on, Grasshopper.

Some other random things I’ve learned, that seem to be popping in to my head tonight.  Don’t jaywalk when visiting a new city.  You WILL get a ticket.  It happened to me my very first time in Seattle.  Actually, I got a stern warning.  But it was enough to deter me from further jaywalking attempts.

By the way.  “Jay” used to be slang for “foolish person.” So when a pedestrian ignored street signs, he was referred to as a “jaywalker.  I saw the sign.

You know, I am all over the place tonight, but every time I hear Jay, I think of two things.  A guy I used to work with at the newspaper who at cracklings all the time.  The other thing is a Blue Jay.  We have a lot of them here.  Blue Jays.  Not crackling-eating-Jay.

And we are back to MORE learning.  BUT.  Here is a cool think I learned recently about Blue jays. They catch ants and wipe them across their wing feathers.  The experts call this behavior…. “anting.”  Those same experts think that the ant’s formic acid may act as an antiseptic on the blue jay’s skin.   Ant Cream.

Don’t give Ben & Jerry any ideas.

Yes.  We live, and we learn.  Some of these lessons can be very small, and seemingly insignificant. (Seemingly.)

And some others might, in fact, change your life forever.

But, each and every moment is teaching us something, if we are aware enough to see it.

On the other hand, that could be brain overload.  A new study at Harvard, indicates that people whose brains had a lowered Neural activity also learned the fastest.   In other words… Has anyone ever told you to stop thinking so much?   Apparently, thinking too much slows down the learning process.

So.  My message?  Keep learning.  Just don’t think about it.
And for goodness sake, don’t drink the Fruit-Smack.

 

There is no wealth like knowledge, and no poverty like ignorance. 
— Buddha

 

It is not once nor twice but times without number  that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.
— Aristotle

 

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone,  but upon error also.
— Carl Jung