Today's
quotation:
We
will recognize that each person needs to nourish and be
nourished by many persons. . . . It is right, even
necessary, to make yourselves available to one another in
new loving, caring, and fulfilling ways-- without the
spectres of old guilts.
Quaker
newsletter
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Today's
Meditation:
The
myth of independence is one of the elements of our lives
that keep us from getting the most out of the lives we
live. Most of the authentic gratification that's
available to us as human beings comes from our connections
to other human beings-- the helping and receiving that we
do for and get from them. In fact, many educators
are making a conscious effort to shift from teaching the
concept of "independence" to teaching the
concept of "interdependence," which seems to be
a much more realistic way of looking at our world and our
places in it.
Somehow
we've come to romanticize and glorify those people who
have nothing to do with society and other people, the
rebels and lone wolves who insist on doing everything
their way, come hell or high water. Many kids grow
up thinking that asking for help is a sign of weakness,
and in my experience those are the students I see failing
because they reach a certain point at which their
self-sufficiency is no longer enough. If they would
just allow themselves to ask someone else to help them,
they might find that there are many important lessons out
there that can be learned only from someone who has
been there already.
"Each
person needs to nourish and be nourished by many
persons." These are incredibly powerful words,
and very difficult ones for us to accept if we have any
sort of fear of people and social situations (as I
do). But this is a fight that's worth the effort,
and that's why I continue to battle: I know that the
best thing I can do for myself is to make myself an
active, contributing part of society, for that's the only
way that I'll learn many of the lessons that I need to
learn-- from the teachers who are all about me in my
world. And when I give back to them, I can be a
teacher, too.
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