teaching and learning

mel has written another beautiful post, about parenting. i am sure all my young-parent friends will relate, and so will not-young-parent friends. i was discussing with H just two days ago how difficult it is/must be to raise a child and inculcate the values you want them to grow with. how ultimately, you just never know how they will turn out, what path they will choose. i know of several families where siblings turned out completely different to each other, choosing opposing value sets, despite growing up together, in the same environment, with the same ethics and principles.

i love mel’s Y, such an awesome idea:

It is shorthand for the idea that every single person on this earth has two possible lives — the one she leads and the unfulfilled life that isn’t accessed because of choices she makes. Each decision takes us to a fork, and I want them to take the path that is going to bring them what they desire in life: friends, success in school, a thriving computer company. I make them sit and think about that other fork; that road not taken. The one that takes them far away from everything they think they want, like some secular version of A Christmas Carol.

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one comment to the above post said this,
“It just feels so hard again at each stage because I have to learn. To play catch-up and figure out this new phase. Every time I get a grasp on something, she changes it up. Life changes it up.”

which totally resonated with me. i’ve been feeling like every time i get something figured out, life throws yet another curveball at me. i miss those days when i felt on top of everything, when i GOT IT; the last two years of high school, or the last two years as an undergrad. or even the first few years of work (not the very first year, but two, three, four!). the last few years, and especially this past year, has been a see-saw ride on the learning graph. i would really like to just cruise on the top there..

and this brings to mind one of my favorite ben okri quotes (from astonishing the gods): “The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.”

i'm okay with life being one huge lesson; i just want to be a good student though, i want to get it! i'm tired of feeling out of the loop..