Clarity for Teachers: Day 23
‘When someone is not clear, don’t point it out. Tend to your own lack of clarity.’
When I was fourteen, I had a friend who was an unbelievable liar. He made up stories that made no sense and insisted they were true, and for a while we mocked him for it mercilessly. This obviously included giving him a nickname based on his tendency to bullshit. Then a while later, I remember noticing that none of us had used that nickname lately, that we’d moved on to mocking other members of the group for other things. (Hey, we were fourteen and cooped up in classrooms, what do you expect?) For that matter, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard my friend tell one of those stupid stories he’d been prone to, either. It seemed like he’d grown out of it, not as a result of the scorn we’d directed at him, but at the point when we’d got bored of teasing him and our attention had moved elsewhere.
Years later, the same friend told me the true story of what had been going on in his life when we were fourteen. It was something he couldn’t talk about at the time, and that we would probably have found just as unbelievable as the stories he did tell us.
I don’t know that us getting bored and finding something else to focus on really had much to do with his growing out of telling stupid stories. I do know that where we put our attention matters — and it almost never helps to focus on what someone is getting wrong.
There’s so much skill to be found in working with attention. Like the breath, the rhythm of attention moves backwards and forwards between operating at an automatic level and coming under conscious control. You can make a choice as to where you put your attention. You can also notice where your attention is drawn, when it’s not under conscious control, and what clues this has for you.
There’s a hint in today’s advice. It’s not just that it tells you it’s no good directing anyone’s attention towards their not being clear, however obvious the issue might seem to you. It’s that it tells you to take this as a clue — check in on your own lack of clarity, it says. When your attention is drawn to the mote in someone else’s eye, use this as a warning system. It’s time to look in the mirror.
Then lastly, there’s the verb — tend to your own lack of clarity — which seems to bridge between the language of attention (‘at-tend’, the etymology is the same), and the image of Voltaire’s Candide resolving to tend his own garden. The roots of this language are in stretching, reaching out (extension), being under strain (tension), direction (tending towards, intention), vulnerability and the need for gentleness (tender). Somewhere within this beautiful knot of words, there are clues to the care which is called for in handling our own lack of clarity, the places where we are stretched or tender, as well as to the vulnerability involved in reaching out to others.
Västerås, 30 March, 2020
This is the twenty-third in a series of commentaries on ‘A teacher’s advice on how to be clear’, Charlie Davies’s reworking of the 1000-year-old Buddhist text, ‘Advice from Atisha’s Heart’. I’m writing these as I take part in Clarity for Teachers, a course that Charlie is leading. You can find out more on the How To Be Clear website.
