Everything from Seeds

It really is interesting to consider just how much of who we are depends upon seeds.  On the purely physical level, almost everything that we eat to gain energy and grow can be traced back on the food chain to seeds that grow the grass eaten by cows and other animals, or that are actually eaten by birds and rodents and even humans.  We put seeds in our bread and in our cereal and in many other things that we eat, but the true beauty of seeds is the way that they can become something completely different when they're planted and they sprout and grow.

As a teacher, I see myself as a seed planter, not a knowledge imparter.  I don't consider my job to be to transfer knowledge from my brain to the brains of my students--rather, I consider my main task to be to provide the conditions in which learning is possible, in which students can find the desire and ability to learn new things, but--more importantly--also find the desire to learn.  After all, we can't grow and develop into the people that we're meant to be if we don't want to learn and grow.  By the end of a semester or a school year, it's much less important that a student has memorized certain facts or processes or information than it is that a student has reflected upon their own lives and the ways that they fit into the world.

So I try to plant seeds.  I try to instill a love for learning by teaching students how to learn, rather than simply focusing on the information they're supposed to "know" by the end of a term.  I make it possible even for someone who struggles with learning to do well in my classes by making an effort, whether they're able to do everything or know everything that the state says they should know by a certain age or not.  I want these seeds that I plant to give them a sense of hope and a feeling that they're able to do anything that faces them, even if it's something very difficult, by approaching it in the right way.

With these seeds, they hopefully are gaining something that will help them later in life--next week or ten years from now.  I've given up needing to see immediate results in the classroom, and I'm much more interested in how they'll be able to do next year, or five years from now when they're in college.  Once I plant the seeds, of course, it's up to the students themselves to nurturer them and help them to grow into something healthy and beautiful, and I have to trust in the process, knowing that I more than likely will never see the actual results of the seeds that I've planted.

On a more basic level, if a tree seed is planted in the wrong kind of soil, then it simply won't grow, or any growth will be stunted.  The tree will not be able to reach its potential.  Unfortunately, we try to treat each young person as if they were all the same--but every young person isn't a maple tree, that can thrive in New England, but that wouldn't even survive on a mountainside in Colorado.  Are these seeds wasted?  Unfortunately, many people aren't able to overcome the treatment they received as young people when they become adults, and they live their lives never really becoming anything near what they had the potential to become.  It's truly a shame, but it happens all the time, unfortunately.

I think about seeds a lot when I'm teaching, and I think of myself not just as a sower of seeds, but as someone who's helping other people to learn how to nurture those seeds and to help them grow to maturity.  You have had many seeds planted in you over the years, from great ideas to strategies for success to possible career tracks to the fulfillment of your own potential.  Do you help those seeds to grow?  If not, how could you do so?  How could you make the seeds of your life grow into beautiful plants, whether they be large and beautiful or small and delicate and beautiful?  And how can you plant seeds in the minds and hearts of others, seeds that can help them to make the most of their own lives?  One of our greatest goals in life should be to help others to navigate life in ways that are healthy and that make them happy, and we can certainly help others to do so by planting healthy seeds in healthy soil.



(By the way, one of the ways that I love to plant seeds is to share books that can help people to see life in wonderful ways.  Some of the books I like to give as gifts are Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Little Prince, Kitchen Table Wisdom, Prescriptions for Living, or books of poems by people like Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, or many others.  I'm planting seeds by giving the books as a gift, and the authors are planting their own seeds in their own ways.)

I Who Know Nothing

I would really like to think that I have some wisdom built up, that I have some knowledge that I've been able to gather and store in my mind over the course of my life.  I would love to believe it, but I can't be sure that it's true.  After all, most of what I've learned here on this planet has been what other people have taught me, either directly by telling me or indirectly when I've read their books or watched their films.  And it really is impossible to know for sure whether or not what I've learned from them is accurate or not, whether or not it's relevant to me and my life.

I say this not to be self-deprecating nor to question the intelligence or integrity of other people, but because I have a feeling inside that there's more to life than just the stuff that other people tell me.  There's more to learn on this planet than simply information, for which our brains are well suited.  There are other things that are much more important than knowing dates and facts and figures and amounts, such as understanding our intuition, feeling compassion when others are hurting, understanding how to live in harmony with the planet we inhabit.  It's important to know how to rest so that we're at our full strength as much as possible, and how to deal with things that stress us out so that we don't allow that stress to affect us too strongly.

I don't think that the answers to these questions are to be found in any particular religion, though that seems to be where most people look for them.  But look at what's happened to our major religious figures over the years--they began as teachers, as people who were willing to pass on important lessons and messages, and then other people deified them and started to worship them.  Most of the Christianity of today, for example, doesn't resemble very closely the things that Jesus taught.  The Buddhism that most people practice today is fairly far removed from the lessons of the Buddha because other people learned those lessons and then modified them to fit their own beliefs, ideas, and ideals.  There are three main divisions of Buddhism now, just as there are several divisions of Christianity, and then there are literally hundreds of divisions within those divisions.

So whose teaching is accurate?  And if the version of a religion that we choose isn't accurate, how are we supposed to know that?

If I was a Methodist my whole life long, for example, I would have been taught over and over again that homosexuality is wrong, and that LGBTQ persons weren't allowed to serve as pastors in the church.  That teaching was just reversed, though, which I see as a positive step ("Love everyone" is an important command), but what about the teachings of the last couple of centuries that are now viewed as archaic and out-of-date?

And more importantly, which other teachings of the church will also be found to be "wrong" in the future?  What are we being taught as right, now, that will one day be considered wrong?

This is why I really like the idea of emptying my mind and allowing things simply to be, without imposing my will on it.  My will tends to be a result of my learning and my beliefs.  If I believe that having green hair is wrong, I tend to judge others harshly when I see their green hair.  But my belief is generally an idea that I've adopted as a truth because someone else taught it to me.  The truth of the matter is that green hair is neither right nor wrong--it simply is.  I'd prefer to simply see it and recognize it and let it be, without judging the person who decided to dye their hair.  And then I can move forward with my learning, and the lesson would simply be that "some people dye their hair green."

If I'm not able to accept this fact, then my "learning" that green hair is wrong will affect me in negative ways.  Judging other people because of what I "know" to be true causes stress, and it keeps me from feeling positive about life and living.  I want this person to change the color of their hair, whether I put it into words or not.  And that's just me trying to control a situation that's completely out of my control because I've "learned" that when something is "wrong," it should be fixed.

But it's not my job to fix the world.  Or maybe it is.  But I don't know enough about anything to tell other people how things should be in the world and in their lives.  I don't know enough to impose my will on others because of what I think I know.

There is much to know here on this planet and here in our lives.  But we have to take that "knowledge" with a grain of salt and realize that what we know is simply a result of the efforts of a unique group of teachers, a collection of people that is completely different for me--nobody else has had exactly the same teachers that I've had.  And there's no reason at all for me to think that all of my teachers were completely right about everything that they taught me, so the best thing that I can do, I think, is to understand that everything that I think I "know" just may be wrong, and I need to recognize that fact and not try to impose my knowledge on others.

It's a difficult task to accomplish--especially for someone who has been a teacher for as long as I have--but if I want to be content and happy in life, it seems to be one of the most important tasks that I can undertake.