The Balance of Teaching and Learning
I was watching the movie, "Eat, Pray, Love" recently and something stuck out to me. Towards the end of the movie the main character, Liz, says something about how when you want to go on a spiritual journey, you have to accept everyone you meet as your teacher. I think that applies to life in general.
Everyone is always talking about how life is this big journey. A journey to where? What purpose does it serve? People are always going to have different answers to those questions. But that’s kind of the point. We all find the answers that makes sense to us as individuals, and there’s no general right or wrong way to put it. Personally, I think the best way to look at life is to look at it as if it were a journey to discover oneself. It’s the only thing we really have control over and there’s so many levels to a person that the journey is a working progress throughout one’s life.
So thinking about it like a soul-searching, spiritual process goes along with the message of the movie I saw. We are much better off accepting others as our teachers. I know I’ve written before about how people are so distracted by what they have to give that they forget that other people have things to give too. Sometimes I think we get a little bigheaded and we think we don’t need the lessons others have to offer. Or sometimes we are so distracted by attempting to teach and give what we have that we miss the lessons other people have to offer.
The reason for this is because as people we are so desperate to mean something and to be understood ourselves that we try to satisfy those needs by showing ourselves off in the hopes that people will accept it. The truth is, you can’t force others to recognize your worth. You can’t make people accept the gift of who you are. The best you can do is accept yourself and trust that the right people will appreciate and benefit from what you can give. Meanwhile, it is also your job to appreciate the people around you as the gifts of who they are and what they can bring to enrich your life.
It’s funny how easily we take people for granted. We appreciate our friends for being there and supporting us and making us laugh. But there’s so much more that they do for us. I have a friend who is very fun. She makes me laugh and we always have these crazy adventures. We’ve been friends since we were five years old. I always thought that I was the one who took care of her. She’s the reckless, passionate, spontaneous one who gets in trouble and I am the mature, intelligent, careful, maternal one who rarely gets in trouble and solves all the problems. I thought I was the one who took care of her and in a lot of ways I do. But she has still taught me so much about having fun and letting go of my fears. I overlooked that for several years because I was so caught up in what I give to her that I didn’t realize what she’s given to me.
We overlook things like that all the time. And we all have our reasons. Sometimes we give and give and give and we never take because we’re supposed to be more independent than that. Sometimes we take and take and take because we don’t know how to give or feel appreciated. The truth is, life wasn’t meant to be a solitary sport. We were meant to give and take. We are teachers and we are students. We really aren’t happy without the balance. Sometimes we have to make ourselves remember to learn from the people around us. But as long as we’re making the effort to get as much as we can from our lives, how bad off can we be?
Yours,
Learning Lainie