Education

Education is a good thing. In college, we students were essentially told that we were being taught how to learn. Or, said differently, we were told that we were being taught how to teach ourselves -- for a lifetime of learning.

Education provides a foundation for this lifetime of learning. It can be done without a formal education. History is full of self-taught leaders who are scholars, teachers and extremely knowledgeable. A formal education, however, is a blueprint of sorts. It helps you find shortcuts, and provides a potential structure to finding out what you want or need to know.

With computers and the internet today, finding information is exceedingly rapid, literally at your fingertips. But, information is not education. In my mind, education is what you do with information...how you use it. Education makes sense of information, if you will.

Discernment is an important concept, I believe, when it comes to information-gathering. The above-mentioned computer/internet certainly provides information. Discernment is the filter one applies to its veracity and usefulness. Is this true? What is it saying, and not saying? Do I need/want to know more? What, and who, do I trust?

Ah. Trust. Another important concept in the educational process. We are taught to trust our teachers. We are told to trust those in authority.

Alas, through experience we come to see that trust is often not deserved. Respect has to be earned, not given, right? And respect is an important element of trust? Isn't it?

Before I get too philosophical, let's see what we've got here: education, information, discernment, trust, respect. Now what does all this have to do with learning to ride a horse?

Clearly, learning to ride a horse is a big physical, mental, emotional and spiritual challenge. That's why it's so thrilling. It can be so FULL. It hits on all cylinders. It asks you to fully engage in this communication with a half-ton (or more), 4-legged creature created by God to help us learn more about ourselves, along with hauling us and our stuff around.

The key component of education is the teacher. No way around it, these underpaid, overworked people who feel the call to help educate the young and not-so-young are, well, essential. You wouldn't necessarily know it from the importance they're given in decision-making and the economy, for example, but that's another discussion.

So, here I am in need of a teacher to help me learn how to ride this horse. After my great Winter of Discontent, as it were, I needed that teacher. Spring arrived, and so did my teacher.

I should insert here that I've always been a good student, in the traditional sense. I like to please. I like to brilliantly perform what the teacher asks and be perfect. School systems were designed for people like me. Teacher spits it out; I spit it back. Voila'! I'm educated.

Never mind that the kid in the back of the room bored to death and shooting spitballs became president of his own company because he was a rule-breaker. Or, that the girl who refused to follow instructions as the teacher gave them is now in Congress, breaking rules over there. I was the good student, and was rewarded with those good grades, accordingly.

Now, in my post-50 era, I was still looking for how to get a good grade. Life, unfortunately, does not often work like school did. It's a little less black and white -- all part of that learning how to teach yourself stuff.

What was the equivalent of earning an "A" in this horseback-riding thing? Spelling, and reading, and arithmetic, and history...they all had come easily to me. This, I was learning every day, was not.

I needed to learn a new way of learning, which I discovered meant being a participant in the process, in a big way. What information came into my brain had to be filtered through my body and communicated to the horse. Whew! It's like learning to think in a foreign language -- or even dream in that language. You'll know you've integrated it into yourself when that happens.

I wasn't thinking of any of this at the time, however. I just found out that a fellow boarder at my barn -- a woman for whom I had the utmost respect because she looked like a horsewoman to me -- had agreed to take on the unholy prospect of being the resident riding instructor.

When can I start taking lessons??

I'm sure she was thinking "What have I gotten myself into?" Well, long story short: she changed my life, in the most positive of ways. She taught me how to learn how to ride my horse.

I'll say that again: She taught me how to learn how to ride my horse.

Only, not in any way I could have imagined or predicted. And, probably not in any way she could have imagined or predicted. This was an education. She started to teach me how to teach myself. She showed me how to fill my horseback-riding toolbox with the necessary tools.

Unfortunately, there were some setbacks along the way...