“When we reach a state of pure awareness, we realize that
there are no problems and therefore no need for solutions.” –Deepak Chopra
This line is from a meditation I got in an email this week,
and it has really affected the way I am feeling about the start of school. You
see when we perceive something as a problem, we have identified it as something
that is wrong or bad, as well as something that requires a solution. But what I
have come to understand is that even when a solution is reached it never erases
the problem, nor the stress I had that was associated with the problem.
However, now, I realize that if I refrain from judging what
is, I save myself a lot of stress. For example, the A/C went out on the Vibe
this week. I could stress about it, worry about it, identify it in my mind as
bad, but, at the end of the day, it’s a broken compressor. It has no idea what
stress it is or is not causing, it just exists. The situation just is. So,
rather than get upset, searching for a solution, I just thought about what
action I could take. Drive car to the shop, get it fixed. The result is exactly
the same as if I had identified the situation as a problem, yet the stress and
worry were non-existent.
You just think about what is, and then you think about what
action you might take to create something that is more congruent with your
true self.
I am the head of a new committee at work, one that has never
existed before, that focuses on literacy. It occurred to be that I formed the
committee because I was trying to
solve a problem. This was leading me on a chase to find the silver bullet. I
felt like I was going to be responsible for the having the answer. But that’s
not it at all. What is is that we have kids who cannot read. For each kid,
there’s not going to be an answer. Literacy is too complex and layered for
there to even be an answer. I was thinking this thought at 5 this morning when
I remembered the Deepak quote. The committee is a group of people in action,
not a group operating from the fear of not finding an answer. Just like the car, all I need is to begin
taking action, help spur others to action, and evaluate our action to determine
if different types of action need to occur.
Could you imagine telling a 5th grader that he
has a reading problem? It’s automatically a judgmental statement, it implies
imperfection and that the child is imperfect or bad in some way. The truth is,
that child is just as sweet and full of light as they have ever been and
whether or not they read has nothing to do with it. So how is it a problem? It
just is, and we are going to take action so that maybe one day we can say it
isn’t. And from beginning to end, we identify that student as whole and perfect
and full of light. And just as the opposite is true, helping the child won’t
then make the child complete or perfect, it will just be another something that
is. The child is already complete, literate or illiterate. We wouldn’t stop and
observe a dog and comment that that dog is somehow imperfect because he is not
cat. (An example from Don Miguel Ruiz). We must see our students as whole to
begin with, they are enough because they are people. We know that a richness of
being comes with the ability to read, so we take action to make that something the
student can experience or take advantage of. To take Jon’s words, “That’s
teaching with soul.”
