Walking down any city street, if one looks carefully at the faces of each passerby, you may notice quizzical looks upon some faces. Almost as if they are trying to understand some perplexing problem or dilemma which besets them.

Education gives one the ability to recognize and thereby understand almost any problem or situation which may confront us in the world. It is like walking down a dark street without any light to guide you if education is lacking in one’s life. On the other hand, possessing an education is like walking down the same dark street, but only this time with a flashlight to illuminate the darkness. Of course the power of the flashlight (knowledge) will increase accordingly with the amount of education one attains in life.

I was asked by a store owner once, to explain to some construction laborers who could not read or write that he could not cash their $1,000 paycheck, because it did not state on the check “whom it was from.” Sadly, I conveyed the news in Spanish to the four guys who all looked like they had been worked to death in the hot July sun. Obviously, they were from some small town in Mexico and none of them had learned to read and write. So in the end, they were taken advantage of. Where as someone who understood reading and writing would have noticed the scam from the very beginning and would have sought out legal recourse. Instead they were left only with the pain of their tired bodies from all of the hard labor, along with their empty wallets.

One does not need to walk on hot coals to obtain at least a G.E.D., or scale Kilimanjaro to get a college education. It is not magic, and you do not have to pay big bucks to some fortune teller to read your palm and tell you the same old mumbo jumbo! All it takes is a desire to better oneself, and one’s loved ones. There is also nothing scary about getting an education either, but there is something scary about going down the dark roads of life without the light of knowledge to guide us.

I clearly remember two guys I once knew who had totally different goals in life. One spoke English well but only wanted to party out and he hated school with a passion. Well, twenty years later he still loves to party, still hates school, drives an old beat up car and also swears that pretty women adore him, even though every time I see him he is always alone!

The other guy spoke mostly Spanish and had limited English skills, yet he went to college for a medical assistant career. I know this, because he used to bug me all the time asking me what certain medical terms meant. He was married and they had a baby son. He went on to graduate from college with an associate’s degree and is now working in the medical field; he on the other hand is now quite a success story.

Education is a ticket to happiness and success in the world. It makes no difference who you are, rich or poor, or what your dreams are, all one has to do is to be diligent and keep on pushing until one gets their G.E.D. or College Degree. So next time you pass by a fortune tellers place, just keep on driving. Why? Because don’t you think that if they could really tell the future, that they would just pick the lotto’s winning numbers and retire to Aruba? Feliz Año Nuevo.