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?
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
