Wednesday, October 16, 2013

"I can't go back to yesterday I was a different person then."
C.S. Lewis  Alice In Wonderland

 Moving forward by staying in the moment is the only way I know how to do things. This applies to life and almost any situation I can imagine.   Every day I change in every way,  physically and mentally,  but what's expected of me is to live inside this box and just do what people do.  What I mean is that I don't deal with things in the same way most people would,  the reason being that I don't see things the way others do. I was trying to help my son,  Isaac,  with some homework and there were questions whose answers seemed obvious  even to me because I could tell what they wanted. Whereas at first it seemed like they were asking a completely different question  which, as  it turns out, I was  right about.  I explained it to someone else and what I was thinking was perfectly logical. It took my ass right back to 5th grade sitting there staring at homework which I would eventually shove in my book incomplete with every other days homework.  I  didn't realize then that I wasn't misunderstanding the questions,  the people writing them were asking poor questions in the first place.

 I'm fortunate in that I learned a lot throughout school even though I didn't do the work, I managed to scrape by thus  allowing me to grow into a  self-thinking  human being.  But I can only imagine how many kids get left behind in this way simply because they don't see things like most people and they get frustrated and give up. I'm not like against education and whatnot I just wished it wasn't so one track minded. And that's the institution as a whole, at least here in America, not teachers as individuals. I had a few through the years who saw through all the bullshit and gave me enough encouragement for me not blow my brains out. It  was an all consuming frustration,  y'all.  Perhaps I was in a worse place due to outside issues,  but learning has always been sensitive with me. I'd get beat for getting bad grades when it's not that I didn't care or really didn't even understand, only overlooked.   And I do appreciate to this day those few people who didn't.

 It struck a nerve in me,  but to bring it back to that quote,  the day I became free from all of that was the day I became aware that I wasn't the same person.  I was no longer restricted to think like the system,  it was ok.   Sometimes I don't think others want to let us become other people because it scares them,  they're afraid of all the things they never held onto,  or the dreams they never chased because they were different. Take a look and see who you are today cuz chances are you're not  the same as you were yesterday.   It's liberating to let go and see things a new way.

3 comments:

  1. I agree you totally... everybody learns differently... what works for me would not work for you.. visa versa.. I think teachers really need to look at that.. we should never be conformists ;-)

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  2. I whole heartedly agree. I graduated high school and went right to college. Now, I'm on track to get my masters. It's all so discouraging because it's about prestige and following the timeline but I want to learn. I want to feel and grow and be and expand beyond the glass they trap me in. In the end, it makes me feel unintelligent because I don't want to play the game and lots of people ARE smarter than me. We destroyed the joy of learning. That's how I feel.
    You're right though, it's important to stay in the moment and live, which I have trouble with because I'm a future planner.

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  3. I can relate to this on many levels. I barely made it out of high school. I only had one teacher, an English teacher, that inspired us to think for ourselves and introduced us to more than what was in the textbooks. I also had a psychology teacher that inspired me. But that’s about it: two teachers out of the whole pack. My English teacher was strict in a gentle way. He played us Bob Dylan and showed us Salvador Dali's artwork. He treated us like humans with minds and hearts. In some ways, even though I never spoke to him one-on-one, he saved me from the hell of high school. Then when I was a reading tutoring for a while (first and second graders), I was reminded how the educational system—the way it's structured, saps the joy and fun out of learning. It's too bad. And ironically, when I began my bachelor completion program, late bloomer that I was/am, I chose a private, holistic college, that taught us how to unlearn what we had been conditioned to learn. I think I was already down that path, but it was nice to be in an educational atmosphere that I was somewhat in synch with, rather than going down the same old path of learning.

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