The Path to Finding Purpose

When education is mentioned, our minds often picture the red-brick buildings we attended as students, the long expanses of artificially lighted hallways, with numerous doors opening up to square classrooms, with rows of tidy desks and chairs. We remember the textbooks we hauled home from the first day of school, number two pencils frantically scribbling across white lined paper, and the distinct air of anxiety on test day. We remember teachers: most of them boring, monotonous, hardly knowing what they were teaching, but also the rare ones who burned with passion and cared for their students and their subjects. We remember the late nights, struggling to stay awake while trying to make coherent sentences for that essay due the next day. This is the kind of education that modern society has forced upon us. But is that all there is to education? What does it even mean to be educated?

Part of the problem is our confusion and mixing up of schooling and education. Sadly, in society today, schooling has taken prevalence and priority over education. We are taught in our schools what to think, write, and say; forced to learn things to fulfill others’ requirements; raised up in this regimented, structured environment where they say that grades don’t matter but in truth, there are consequences and repercussions when they fall. Schooling lacks curiosity, enthusiasm, and choice.

To be truly educated is to discover. In order to be educated, one must go through a journey that does not only include our school systems, but our life experiences. To be educated means to be constantly accumulating understanding of the world around us. When we become educated, we become inspired and passionate. With this goal, then, schools really should be a place that fosters understanding and exploration. School should guide young minds on the lengthy journey of gaining knowledge and is simply one of the ways people can go about in becoming further educated.

Those who are truly educated also have a greater sense of self. Education is not only a process of learning facts, but also a chance to learn about oneself. In this respect, all experiences in a lifetime that may define a person add to their education. The mistakes that we learn from, the life lessons we are taught, the places we see, the people we meet, the circumstances we are born into, and the opportunities we make for ourselves all serve to teach us, to give us a broader perspective of humanity. Finding ourselves in this lifetime is a part of being self — educated, being aware of our inner self along with being in tune with our surroundings. We are shaped by our experiences and what we make of those experiences, which have the power to educate us on our own personality and character. Education is not limited to those small stuffy classrooms, where students are only taught through textbooks, or teachers who learned from textbooks, but those who are truly educated experience a continual process of renewal, a changing for the better, learning along the way to be true to oneself.

But this is not to say that school is completely useless. I have learned many things in school — from reciting the alphabet to forming grammatically correct sentences to writing elaborate essays, from counting numbers to performing simple addition to solving complex word problems, from learning simple facts in the course of history to evaluating cause and effect. School has taught me critical thinking skills that are, needless to say, essential to “real life” — life beyond the shelter of school and the home, where perhaps survival of the fittest still applies — and my years in this social institution have been adding to my education constantly. However, school is not the only way I have been educated in my almost 17 years of existence.

My religion has impacted the way I think about and view the world. Christianity has profoundly shaped my morals and character — it affects the ways I deal with challenges, with accomplishments and failures, with other people, with myself. Religion has taught me to be honest, trustworthy, kind, humble — it sets up the foundation for the way I think, speak, and act.
My interactions with people everyday have taught me social skills, which are important because humans are social beings. We are educated in how to act in public by our parents, we are educated about what kinds of people to be friends with and by the same token, learned what kinds of people to avoid by testing the waters ourselves. I’ve learned to read and recognize body language, I’ve learned how different kinds of people express emotions, express their ideas, and care for others through my observations of the world around me.

I’ve also been educated in how to get along or just interact with people from sports. Just from my volleyball team, I’ve been educated on the personalities of all kinds of people — those who hate your guts for no reason, those you have to work really hard to please, those who are indifferent about you, those who are naturally very accepting, those who are quiet and timid, those who are loud and bossy — and at the same time, I have learned how to deal with all kinds of people. Some people I hang around during breaks in practice, some I actively avoid, and to some, I always have to prove myself. Volleyball has also taught me how to work with others, despite our conflicts, to leave everything at the door once I step into the gym. I have learned the importance of depending on and trusting my teammates to save a ball, to give me a good pass, to be able execute a play with strength. Volleyball has taught me to be mentally tough, to shake things off, to constantly evaluate what I need to do better and how to go about improving.

Volunteering and mission trips have exposed me to parts of the world that I previously was unfamiliar with, educating me about more of the world. I saw shocking poverty in Mexico while on a mission trip with my youth group, yet also noticed this sense of contentedness in people even in the midst of their struggles. From that trip, I learned about a different side of humanity, a different lifestyle that never really entered my mind before. The mission trip was an eye opener and redefined what it means for me to be grateful and hopeful. Perhaps on a more lighthearted side, volunteering at races through a school club taught me how to efficiently pack necessities into runner’s pack and what to say as runners pass by my table on their way to the start line. I have been educated through my experiences on how to make small talk with people, how to seem friendly.

We even become educated while having fun. In this age of accessible technology and entertainment, people are educating themselves through social media, the news, even movies. We learn how to navigate through the intricate web of the internet, how to be “tech savvy” at a time when that is a valuable skill to have. We keep up with the news by watching TV in order to educate ourselves on the condition of the world we live in. Movies can even educate, for example, teaching people history through film, and exposing people to different perspectives of history.

Those who are truly educated learn through various springs of information and contain in themselves a culmination of knowledge that comes from all life experiences. However, the path to becoming educated never truly ends — there is always more to uncover and we must have a thirst for knowledge, curiosity for the unknown, and courage to push our limits. We must first break through the mental bonds of society’s definition of “education” before we can be on our way to become educated. To become educated involves a complex, but beautiful journey of discovery — of self, other people, and communities we are a part of. We are educated by the experiences that shape our identity — parents, friends, school, sports, mistakes, achievements, passions. And why should we even strive to become educated? Because being educated gives a joy that nothing else in this world can even come close to offering — the joy of finding purpose in our lifetimes.