The Frenchman and the Message

Hey ya'll. I don't really want to use this platform to talk about things from school but today I encountered something that everyone should sit and just consider for a moment. We were reviewing writing from some of the great philosophers of education. Pedagogy in tha HOUSE!! Anyway, my man Johnny Jack had something poignant to say:

"How rapid is our journey on this earth! The first quarter of life has been lived before one knows the use of it. The last quarter is lived when one has ceased to enjoy it. At first we do not know how to live; soon we can no longer live; and in the interval which separates these two useless extremities, three-quarters of the time remaining to us is consumed by sleep, work, pain, constraint, and efforts of all kinds. Life is short, not so much because it lasts a short time as because we have almost none of that short time for savoring it. The moment of death may well be distant from that of birth, but life is always too short when this space is poorly filled. We are, so to speak, born twice: once to exist and once to live." -- Jean Jacques Rosseau

Isn't that perceptive? And true? He may have insulted the very young and the elderly by calling their generations "useless extremities", but his message is something to keep in mind.

So, we've all heard messages like this before but sometimes they need to be repeated. If you're hedging on something or making excuses against something you know you ought to do, stop. Then go for it. I'm going to try to keep that in mind for awhile, and I hope you'll do the same. Out.