To School Or Not To School?
We’re taught a lot to succeed. We’re taught to aspire to be the best. We’re conditioned to look down upon ourselves if we fail to bring the desired results. We’re taught to be result-oriented, guilty-driven. In a lot of ways, we are taught to get to a certain ‘finish line’ because if we don’t, we’ve been taught to believe we deserve a long guilt-trip and a decade of self-loathing.
What nobody teaches us though, but ought to be taught and emphasized harder from the very beginning is how to indulge in and enjoy the process. No, I’m not an entrepreneur who’s comparing the goal-oriented and the process-oriented approach of management. I’m just another human being on the face of the earth, trying to make a living out of auscultating other human beings’ breath sounds as much as I love comparing those breath sounds! And there are a lot of times I fail to differentiate. Anyways, that’s a whole different story, for yet another day.
The point is failure begins to appear less intimidating once you’ve mastered the art of savouring the process and the grind that sometimes accompanies it. These lessons, unfortunately, might not find a place in the daily curriculum, which I think instills a certain ‘fear of failure’ among some children, pushing them over the edge and encouraging them to resort to a ‘win by hook or by crook’ pattern, that could dangerously follow them further into their adult lives, spiralling into unhealthy social and interpersonal exchanges.
A particular poem by W. H. Dawson comes to my mind as I go about scribbling my thoughts:
If in life’s great, onward battle
You have done your best and lost,
If amid the din and rattle
You regarded not the cost,
If you met your foeman bravely,
If you dared to do or die,
God will credit you, most surely,
For your fearless, honest try.
It is important that we shift the gravity of our minds from ‘attaining’ to ‘learning’. Afterall, life is short and there are so many unfinished lessons already bookmarked.
©NV
