Take an educated guess as to what day it is? It’s Happy Living Day #4!

On Topic Education 

I can explain things pretty well.  Much of the time this ability is due to my education.  I am relatively educated about art for example and I can explain certain things about it. Most of us can do that in some area.  My father could talk forever on all facets of aviation.  My sister can talk about genealogy in detail.  My wife on the business of electrical and gas utilities, my oldest daughter on neuroscience, my youngest on fashion design.  

Off Topic Education

But what about areas that have no connection to anything in your life, what is the value of being educated in those areas?  In 2005 Steve Jobs gave a commencement speech at Stanford University.  He said something very important about how education really happens.

“Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Replacing Explain

So, the idea stated by Mr. Jobs above is that ALL of your education matters. It doesn’t matter just for your job, it matters for your happy living.  Yes, the more you educate yourself the more you can explain things, explain connections, explain ideas, to others.  But it is more than that.  Here is what I mean.  In the quote above, replace ‘explain’ with ‘understand’.  Now replace it with ‘please’.  Now replace it with ‘forgive’.  

A lifestyle of self-education is a major key to growth, to understanding, to wisdom about yourself.  And those things can lead to some level of living happy. 

Replacing Yourself

Now go even one step further.  Replace ‘yourself’ with ‘others’ – explain others, understand others, please others, forgive others.  Commit to self-education throughout your life and it leads not just deeper into yourself, but past yourself to others.  And then you will really be living happy.

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Love – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #1

Courage – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #2

Smiling – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #3

Education – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #4

Transformation – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #5

Judging – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #6

Expression – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #7

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Drawing and guide by Marty Coleman, who once took a course on building a stone wall without mortar.

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