But it still looks like a horse in striped pajamas

to me!

Perspective. It's a twisty topic. I see a zebra now, but I saw a horse in striped pajamas once and some see a black zebra with white stripes, others a white animal with black stripes. I saw Peter Pan fly, now I see the wires and some people can't even see Peter Pan at all. I saw fairies and elves and leprechauns, now I see patterns in the bark, the grass and the leaves. Some people see them, some people believe I saw them and some people think I was/am nuts. I see a person learning and growing and they see someone who has lost everything they attempted to accomplish.

The niece is being asked nicely to take a medical discharge. Her legs and arm don't work like they used to and now the army says they can't do anything else for her. With her training there are desk jobs she could do but I don't think they like to have wounded vets sitting out where the new soldier recruits can see them....and that is wrong.

What is she supposed to do for medical treatment? Work with the VA that is so backed up that it takes months to get the paper work through, much less get seen by a doctor. This is not acceptable!

She spent, what seems like to her, long years qualifying for the army, going through basic, testing for positions, taking extra training and changing her MO when she went airborne. She was deployed to Iraq to do her job and now she's back in the USA being told everything she worked for over the last five years no longer applies. Thanks and good bye.

Is her time wasted? Is the learning wasted? Is her life being wasted? I think the army is wasting a talented soldier by not finding work for them in the service til her time is served. But her life wasted - no.

So she doesn't need to know how to jump out of an airplane everyday. The confidence it gave her stayed. She won't need to be able to know how to research the latest risks for daily patrols anymore but the training to do research applies to many positions. She can't run 30 miles in full armor with a loaded pack but she at least HAS her legs and arm. They will work to get her around. She will know in every war movie what is real and what is pretend, she can tear down and rebuild her guns and her cousin can teach her to load her own ammo. She knows how to take care of herself and, more importantly, she KNOWS she can take care of herself.

Education is never wasted. At the very least it can be passed on to someone who needs it, at best it can save a life. Living and doing your best at whatever you are trying to do is never wasted. You learn what you can and can't do and you learn how to do it well. You will find that most of life is learning new things and how to do them efficiently and well.

Coming to a complete halt and having to change directions like she will have to do is a shock but she knows she can learn, she knows she can take care of herself and so she can choose a new direction she thinks she will enjoy and KNOW she can go that way well. And if she was wrong she can change to another career or training program and go on from there.

I have a half crochet lawn chair, a quilt top with 6 of 10 rows done in a bag upstairs, all the stuff to do a beach theme wall decoration that I gathered myself about 8 years ago in a box upstairs. I have a pile of jeans and shirts ready to be cut into another quilt top I have been wanting to make for my whole life of denim and flannel with the old fashioned heavy batting in it because I like to FEEL tucked in by the weight of a quilt. I hate feather blankets, you can't even tell they are there. That's just a partial list of things I have learned and left behind.

You learn new things, you do them a while, you move on. Yes, I still whine about the quilts but I gave up on the chair and the beach wall decoration. I learned to do HTML and am working on CSS and XML. I can program in basic and make a ball bounce around a screen with a little gun to shoot at it on a commodore 64. I can change the strings on a guitar and tune it by ear or with the piano or electric tuner. I used to be able to sing more than 400 songs and play them from memory. I learned where every little thing was and how much it cost in the retail store I worked in. That is when I realized I was forgetting my song lyrics. I know basic first aid, CPR and think I could set a broken bone in an emergency. I can delegate tasks and authority, build and run a data base in several programs and bake a cherry pie. I can read and follow instructions.

I don't need to know any of these things to do sales well. So they are "useless knowledge". Aren't they? No. Why not? Because you never know everything and you never know what you might need to know tomorrow - or later today.

I never grew up saying I wanted to be anything in particular so I never knew what to study for. I am sorry for that now. You can learn to do anything and change your mind later but if you learn to do nothing that is all you can do. I guess I should have gone into the DNR as I hate what they are doing with our public lands in MI and I might be able to change it. I should have been a teacher as I love to see the little light blink on over a kid's head when they grasp a concept. I might have been a social worker but I could never stay inside the rules when I saw someone needed help. I wish I could be a polititian but history makes that unlikely.

While I still have things I want to learn not many of them would add to my ability to increase my income. And when I die I won't need to know any of this stuff. Is it useless to learn anything then?

Pick a direction and go that way. Do it well. Make a living. If you don't like it, move on in a new direction. If you have one marketable skill to carry you -nursing, teaching, plumbing, drywall, construction, driving a big truck, child care, computers - you can find the time and the money to learn to do what ever else comes along and interests you later.

The most important thing you take with you from your childhood should be reading and learning HOW to learn. Even our vets coming back as para and quadriplegics are having to learn many daily skills from scratch and find a way to look at life that I don't know if I would have the strength of character to carry through on.

Every time you do something positive for yourself you add a little bigger chance of the next day being even better for you.

It's life - Live it! If you don't like yours then change it. Take control of your future by doing something to improve it today. One little thing at a time will add up to big changes down the road. Trust me - from homeless panhandler to happy home owner didn't happen overnight but it happened.