Learning lessons the hard way

It is occurring to me, today, that I have been foolishly learning so many of my lessons the hard way, these days.

So many things that I have known to do but which I have stubbornly chose to learn by trial and error rather than trust received wisdom. It's so foolish, when I've thought about it, today. It is also the way that elders told me I would learn lessons when I was much younger. They were right.

And I am tired of learning lessons the hard way. Now, as a teacher, I watch so many kids live life this way. It is a sad and foolish way to live that sometimes has serious and accumulated consequences, over time (and undoubtedly will for me, as well).

Jesus was right. It is so easy to see that tendency in kids or others. It is much more difficult to see it in ourselves.

Up until I was 29 and in the 4th year of my Ph.D. program in special education policy, I trusted teachers and adults to guide me, better. But then they started to strong-arm me, more, and their clear flaws and shortcomings and failures and blindspots became all the more magnified for me. And I stopped trusting adults I had trusted fairly readily, up until that point.

And for 5 years since I left that program, I have had my defenses up, waiting for yet one more older person to try to strong-arm me and for me to resist their efforts in any way I could.

And as a teacher, I watch my students do it with me, even when they clearly need the discipline or self-discipline. And I understand it, better, from the other side of that table.

I guess we all have to foolishly learn many of our lessons the hard way before we learn them at all. George Bush and Hillary Clinton being no exceptions to that rule.

I am just tired of learning lessons the hard way. I want to learn the easy way, which is to accept received wisdom that I know to be genuinely wise.

For me, that means making choices I know are better choices and cutting out the bullshit optioning for what I know are bad choices.

And as a teacher, that means letting my students make choices and to stop giving them reasons to have their defenses up to keep adults at bay.

I guess we all have to learn lessons the hard way. But it sure it nicer when we learn lessons the easier way.

Love,
Ben