"I've been Thinking a lot about Things."

Have you ever heard the expression, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks?"

Well, this old dog, is trying to learn some new tricks. I reckon with old age comes the regrets of not paying better attention in school. Classes that I really didn’t like back then, such as History and English, I now love. Go figure. Now that I’m older, and hopefully wiser, my desire to learn has increased. I love studying about the world in which we live. There are so many fascinating places to explore and histories to learn.

My cross-country trip this past summer opened my eyes to the wealth of information available to each of us, if we just stop and take the time to look, ponder and listen. Since this trip, I’ve been thinking a lot about things. Essentially, taking the time to think and learn about things above the earth, and things below, of principalities and kingdoms, of processes and formulas, and of governments and peoples is now important to me.

This whole discussion reminds me of a story I once heard of a man who desired to know all that there was to know concerning everything in the world. Therefore, he set out on his journey to find the wisest man in the world, figuring that this wise man could teach him all that there was to know.

In his search for this wise man, he was led to a seashore, where he found this wise man sitting on the beach, gazing out into the expansive ocean. As the man approached the wise man he told him that he had traveled a long distance to learn every thing that he knew. The wise man arose and bade the man follow him out into the ocean. When they were about chest-deep in the water, the wise man took the man’s head and held it under water until the man just about pasted out for lack of air. The wise man then let him go, and walked back to the shore and sat down. Well, the man who had traveled such a long distance was totally perplexed as to why the wise man would try to drown him.

As the man, still coughing and choking from the lack of air, approached the wise man again, he asked him why he would do such a thing. The wise man turned to him and said, “When your desire for knowledge is as great as your desire is for air, come back, and I will teach you all that I know.”

Isn’t life like that? We tend to do the things that we have great desires for. Those desires change from time to time. But if we take a step back and look at the grand scheme of things, it is our duty to learn all things.

Well, this old dog is going to start “thinking a lot more about things.”