This year in life

A couple of weeks ago I stopped being able to write on this blog.   Some glitch in the system made all the pages come up blank when I would log in to my WordPress account to try and post.   A shout out for help on Facebook gave me some good suggestions but nothing worked.

So what did I do?

I ran right out and signed up for a class on WordPress coding, of course!   (Also, I have this bridge in Arizona you might be interested in purchasing…)

No, what I really did was dig around in my gmail archives for the email of the guy who originally programmed my website, contacted him and was profoundly thankful when after a few days he located the problem and fixed it.  (Thank you Ryan!)

Knowledge of website coding is a useful skill, but one I have no interest in learning.

Luckily I don’t need to, as long as I know how to reach out to people who do when/if there is a problem.

Charlie Rose recently interviewed Ralph Fiennes to discuss his new movie “The Invisible Woman”, which tells the true story of Charles Dickens’ long-term, secret love affair with a younger woman.   Fiennes said that until he was handed the script, he had never read much Dickens (“Little Dorrit” being the exception) and knew very little about the man or his writing.  Now he’s read all of Dickens’ work and delved deeply into his life story in order to play the role and direct the film.

I tell these two stories because they reminded me that:  a)  Our kids don’t need to know everything about everything, b) they  won’t know anything about some things until they are older and their interest is sparked and c) there are some things they will never learn or know much of anything about.

Accepting that this is not only ok but the norm of every human existence, goes a long way in easing those pangs of panic that every parent feels at one time or another.   So many discussions revolving around the education of 5-18 year old children take on an air of almost desperate urgency, as though learning is finite and resourcefulness in the face of something we don’t know, impossible once we pass into the realm of legal adulthood.

Nothing, of course,  could be farther from the truth.

This year, have fun with your kids. Enjoy your time together and do stuff you like.   Follow your own interests and support and encourage theirs.   Foster independence.

Live fully.   That’s education.

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Again, massive thanks to Ryan Cleaver who detected a problem with an obscure help section in the core WordPress code and removed it, allowing my website to be fully functional once more.   

 

 

 

2 comments on “This year in life

  1. Dana Britt says:

    Your examples are perfect for this topic, Amy. So well said! It’d be so much different for so many if folks didn’t get so hung up on covering every single schooly subject ever. Want/need to learn about it? Seek out answers! Again, great post!

    :)

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