Who Teaches Us To Live?

With everything that's been happening lately, I've been wondering why it is that years of education only teach us how to read, write, and so on.

Who teaches us how to live? How to deal with painful emotions? How to survive, or better yet, to thrive?

study.jpg
pic byJim Moore

Traditionally, this is the role our parents have — but the big assumption is that they already know, and they're not still picking it up themselves.

Personally, it feels like so much of what I've learned in terms of dealing with the world and truly living I've only discovered in the last few months & years.

To my complete lack of surprise, my Aikido sensei pointed out that this train of thought has already been well covered (by someone far more eloquent than I):

THE VASTEST THINGS ARE THOSE WE MAY NOT LEARN

The vastest things are those we may not learn.
We are not taught to die, nor to be born,
Nor how to burn
With love.
How pitiful is our enforced return
To those small things we are the masters of.

- by Mervyn Peake

July 29, 2008 | Posted in life |
  • http://joelpitt.com Joel

    I've often been sad about the things that are untaught. My school had a life studies course, but that was stuff like CVs which was really not that useful (I haven't needed one for at least 5 years).

  • http://sidawson.org Si Dawson

    .

  • http://sidawson.org Si Dawson

    .. and, of course, HOW you do your CV changes so drastically depending on purpose anyway.

    Apparently in the last few years here in Australia they've started doing a "how to get on in life" kind of course.. but that's very recently… not sure how broad it is or what it covers exactly, but sounds like it's heading in the right direction. Better late than never.

  • teepee

    As a parent of grown-ups, I comment from my own experience.

    I always had a disconnect with my parents' response of "because I'm the parent, that's why". Implicit in that statement is the premise that because parents are older they are somehow wiser. To me, that statement was flawed because it was rooted in someone else's experience from a past generation.

    Missing from that statement was acknowledgement of the fact that, in the interim, society has evolved and along with it, societal norms. An illustration of this is the way in which the computer game Doom was at first viewed as pejorative and evil-causing vs the elephant that is presently in the room, Grand Theft Auto.

    Hell, my parents had adding machines and latterly Telex and fax machines and they thought they were at the forefront of technological advances. To be fair, they probably were — in that tiny window of time.

    When I became a parent Moore's Law had already been proponed and accordingly, the knowledge and experiences of kids increased exponentially. As a parent, I had two choices; hold on to the standards and values that had been handed down through centuries, or allow my thinking to evolve. Being a systems thinker, I chose the later.

    Initially, what that meant for me as a parent was opening up the lines of communication with my kids. Secondly, it necessitated me challenging my own values and assessing whether they were still valid in the context of my kids' generation. It goes without saying that I needed their trust and full engagement for this to happen. In that engagement I learnt that more recent generations are taught to be lateral thinkers and problem-solvers rather than rule followers. As an aside, to some extent I blame fear-based religions for the rule following ethos.

    So here I was, by now, a single parent (as a result of atypical circumstances), wanting to help my kids become valued members of society. What did I espouse? Basically, a christian principal – do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Although, this attitude requires a rudimentary understanding of how others might treat you as well as an acknowledgement of some social norm. Somewhat of a conundrum, I accept.

    At an operational level, I talked with my kids about how they would react, if they were the parent/s in certain hypothetical situations. As a result of these discussions, my kids formulated a set of rules of acceptable behaviour from which they NEVER deviated. These rules were drawn up by the kids as a contract and were always stuck to the fridge door.

    They are now 24 and 22 and we speak openly and honestly at least once a week. My love for them is unconditional and they tell me that they draw strength from this.

  • http://sidawson.org Si Dawson

    Well, I'd say that that view is a rare one.

    I think it's difficult for parents to transition from having very young children (< 4) where, relatively, the parent does know everything, to, as the child gets older, situations where that's much less the case.

    It's easier — less work, simpler — to just stick with the status quo "I'm the parent, I'm right, live with it."

    Damn cool idea getting your kids to come up with a set of rules of acceptable behaviour — how old were they when you did this?