Today I am smiling at myself with the realisation that my role as teacher involves constant unlearning, re-learning, unlearning, re-learning. Building up ideas, knocking them down again. Building up truths, having them smashed up. I guess I am no different from the rest of society. Entire civilizations, empires and nations, rise up, and decline, simoultaneously and in replacement of each other, echoing along the pulsating, gyrating umbilical cord of time in which we all live!
My heart, head, and soul become full, and swell, and are poured back out. Like the moon, I wax and wane. Appear to be full and empty. The moon is but a black rock floating in space, and without the light of the sun shining upon it, we forget the whole moon is always there - constant!
Every time I think I have something licked, that I have mastered myself, triumphed over myself, that I am illuminated, that I understand, I stand at the other side of the shore and recognise that I am an amateur, a charlatan, a sham, a fool, blind in the dark. Walking around the circle of things I see myself grand and magnificent, overflowing with wise words and thoughts and at the other side, gibbering, foolish, uncertain, wrong.
Maybe the true path to wisdom is to recognise ourselves as learners and unlearners? And for those of us who teach - teachers and unteachers. To recognise the illusion of truth? The illusion of knowing. Of certainty.
Maybe the only way to be is an eternal beginner?
To wake every day with the attitude of a child - always glad and bouncy to be alive, with a fresh perspective?
To realise that we know less than nothing?
Life can only ever be a wonder, a mystery and surprise, when we recognise how little we really know.
That idea makes me smile a big goofy grin!
My name is Paula, and I officially know less than nothing!
:-)
HAHA! love this on so many levels. Pinning the image straight onto my Pinterest moon board.
ReplyDeleteTotally with you on the learning and unlearning thing - every time we "prove" ourselves, we have our flip side proven too.
You, Mrs Paula Motherfunker, are a very wise and groovy woman xxx
I thought you might like this one, being the waxing and waning moon flower child that you are! Check out the link attached to the pic, love it. Big kiss X
ReplyDeleteI have spent the last few weeks realising the same thing - I'm realising there is no percieved final destination to our journeys, to have one would be foolish and frustrating, that our journeys never end, that all we can do is show commitment to continued learning as we walk our paths, and practice what we do learn day in day out. I have found this greatly comforting this last month, my practices have become easier because of it and I walk on joyfully with this in mind now :)
ReplyDeleteMuch love mama x