I cannot remember how many times my Father told me, "If you don't understand something, its OK to ask!"
It must have been happening when I was quite young because it was and has always been a mantra for me. I hear that phrase in my head every time I don't understand, or want to know something about what is the current event or conversation. I suppose it served me well for the longest time, but it came home to roost when at the age of about six I was in the last year of infant school, preparing for the move to elementary school. (I started school at the age of 4 in UK). We had a parent/teacher night and we had assembled all of our work for our parents to see. We were supposed to walk our parents through what we had been doing in school and it was an opportunity for our parents to talk to the classroom teacher.
My classroom teacher was, as I remember it, an ancient, wizzened lady with frizzy grey hair and a stoop. My Father asked her how I was doing in school and she commented that I was doing very well (how pleased I was to hear that!) but then she added that there was one very real problem. My Father was anxious to hear what that was and he asked. The reply? "He is always asking questions!"
My Father looked suprised at the response and said in my defence "I am pleased to hear it! I have always told him that if you don't understand something to not be afraid to ask." The teacher's response I can still hear as clearly today as I heard it 52 years ago. "Yes, but not in the middle of a test!"
oldlincolnian
Thursday, April 29, 2010
What is important about adding value to young lives?
For a very long time in my ever expanding number of years I have benefitted from the advice of others around me. Not all of it was given as advice, although "do this" and "do that" certainly formed part of my education. Much came from the demonstration of "how to" and a great deal came from the observation, admittedly tainted by own perception, of "what not to do".
I have also learned, largely from observation yet backed up by the comments of others around me, that many people do not learn much from advice or experience. In fact it has caused a quandry for me in trying to understand how it can be that many do not learn.
This has left me with a rather poor opinion of the majority of people who seem to operate in the middle to very low ground of awareness and perception. This came to me naturally. It was not born out of innate personal rudeness or a sense of arrogance. However, indeed I suppose that over time I have upset a number of people who fall into this middle to lower ground, as they consider me to be arrogant (or one of many other names I have been called).
Having a deeply enquiring mind ever since I was a small child allowed me to always wonder why this unpopularity and malperception of myself existed. It took me a very long time to realise it was happening, longer to come to terms with it and longer still to have the courage to face up to it and understand how it may have come about and how to control it.
Well, as of this writing I am now 58 years old. I am still as "arrogant" as I ever was and in some ways I suppose that I grow more so and feel the need to explore this more.
I think I have come to some understanding of why it is that people perceive me so, as seen from their perspective, yet it does not clarify for me why it is that they see this as they do. The problem as I understand it now is that I have been exposed to a great deal, I have exposed myself to a great deal, I am an observer and gifted with intelligence, literacy and an ability to express myself. The problem is that what is lacking is an audience of companions who are operating on a like frequency.
Such people are, sadly for me, few and far between.
However, during my search for self understanding I have had the good fortune to meet others who are as "able" as I am blessed to be and some more who are vastly more able and willing to share their insight.
As a younger man I once read a quote attributed to Sir Isaac Newton. I forget now the precise quotation, but it is very close to this:
IF I HAVE UNDERSTOOD MUCH, IT IS BECAUSE I HAVE STOOD ON THE SHOULDERS OF GREAT MEN AND LOOKED FURTHER.
This has been very important to me. I have been blessed with the opportunity to stand beside and observe and learn from men and women who have experienced much more than I have. I have sought them out and inserted myself in their lives, to a greater or lesser degree. This happened because I came from very humble and ordinary roots but always wanted to see and understand more than my day by day environment could offer me.
Some of these people were not even aware I was learning from them. Some most definitely were. What placed me in a state of awe around them was that they willingly gave of their experience when asked. They opened up their world, their experience bank and their own understanding as developed from their world and shared it, allowing me to take from it what I wanted, and helping me to expand upon the experience.
I do not think I was always aware that this was happening at the time. Perhaps they were not either? I think and believe that we are not always aware of what we are contributing to others, even when it is good; however this means that we are not always aware of what we are contributing to others when it is bad, and that should be a large cause for concern and a signal to us to be as aware as we can of our thoughts, actions and behaviours towards those whom we may influence.
Non-the-less, I have learned to create good out of bad and how to do better from good. I have come to own that reality as a form of self-consciousness. I try to be an active helper, a catalyst, a signpost to generosity of self. Alas I am not perfect. I have also from time to time done harm, almost never maliciously, but even to that I must confess, thankfully in small measure.
In my meanderings through many fields in life I have met, literally and metaphorically, people of a great number of sorts in a large number of countries. This has been good for me as I have been placed face to face with realities which are quite different in experience and exposure to my own. Some of these people have been a real challenge to me as their reality was from point to point quite divergeant from my own. Spending time with these people was quite literally hard on me as everything was questioned. My self-created precepts were under attack and review from outside and within, all the time being honed and modified, improved and converted because of the influence of these people.
I have not stayed in the small circle of same-age friends in small-town England where I grew up. I have not fallen into a comfortable life of familiar things which cosset and cradle one into a sense of narrow awareness. I have stood on the edge of precipices and on the top of rocky crags which I have had to struggle to climb and have been hurt physically and emotionally by some of the experiences endured reaching the high ground. I have benefitted and grown stronger.
In graduate school, learning from some good men who had some very esoteric understanding of life and ways of being, I was presented with a short poem. Its origin is unknown to me, though I think that it is likely it was penned by the man who gave it to me. I do not recall all of its words, but its meaning helped me to understand why it is that I find myself unpopular. "The more you understand, the less you can ever explain".
This can be seen as a curse! But it is indeed true. This explained to me why great men cannot ever really pass on their wisdom as an identifiable block of conscious understanding. Each and every generation must learn by repeating the learning of their forbears, but possibly because of a marginal willingness to learn, with a small increment of wisdom and then, standing on their shoulders, look further, and then repeat the cycle.
Sadly it is hard to have this understood by the young. My own son fights the notion, expressing to me that he desires to make ALL his own mistakes and learn from them for himself. He doesn't often want to know what we know. This is deeply saddening. It is part of the arrogance of youth. I can see that from age 58 and with a lot of experience in life to date. I am just grateful to my own Grandfather that he ignored this element which I am sure I must to some extent have exhibited early on and proceeded to tell me about real life and how to deal with it.
So this blog is dedicated to my Grandfather, Robert Reuben Langley 1891-1973
What he started in me I want to recruit other men and women into. I believe strongly in this and I shall speak it into being by writing here, as others have encouraged me to do, about that which comes to me day by day. I hope that others will find some value in what I write, that it will provoke thought in many ways on many subjects and add value to the lives of others.
My aim is to offer and expand my experience for the consumption of others. If you are reading this, you are welcome to email me to add your own perspective.
oldlincolnian
I have also learned, largely from observation yet backed up by the comments of others around me, that many people do not learn much from advice or experience. In fact it has caused a quandry for me in trying to understand how it can be that many do not learn.
This has left me with a rather poor opinion of the majority of people who seem to operate in the middle to very low ground of awareness and perception. This came to me naturally. It was not born out of innate personal rudeness or a sense of arrogance. However, indeed I suppose that over time I have upset a number of people who fall into this middle to lower ground, as they consider me to be arrogant (or one of many other names I have been called).
Having a deeply enquiring mind ever since I was a small child allowed me to always wonder why this unpopularity and malperception of myself existed. It took me a very long time to realise it was happening, longer to come to terms with it and longer still to have the courage to face up to it and understand how it may have come about and how to control it.
Well, as of this writing I am now 58 years old. I am still as "arrogant" as I ever was and in some ways I suppose that I grow more so and feel the need to explore this more.
I think I have come to some understanding of why it is that people perceive me so, as seen from their perspective, yet it does not clarify for me why it is that they see this as they do. The problem as I understand it now is that I have been exposed to a great deal, I have exposed myself to a great deal, I am an observer and gifted with intelligence, literacy and an ability to express myself. The problem is that what is lacking is an audience of companions who are operating on a like frequency.
Such people are, sadly for me, few and far between.
However, during my search for self understanding I have had the good fortune to meet others who are as "able" as I am blessed to be and some more who are vastly more able and willing to share their insight.
As a younger man I once read a quote attributed to Sir Isaac Newton. I forget now the precise quotation, but it is very close to this:
IF I HAVE UNDERSTOOD MUCH, IT IS BECAUSE I HAVE STOOD ON THE SHOULDERS OF GREAT MEN AND LOOKED FURTHER.
This has been very important to me. I have been blessed with the opportunity to stand beside and observe and learn from men and women who have experienced much more than I have. I have sought them out and inserted myself in their lives, to a greater or lesser degree. This happened because I came from very humble and ordinary roots but always wanted to see and understand more than my day by day environment could offer me.
Some of these people were not even aware I was learning from them. Some most definitely were. What placed me in a state of awe around them was that they willingly gave of their experience when asked. They opened up their world, their experience bank and their own understanding as developed from their world and shared it, allowing me to take from it what I wanted, and helping me to expand upon the experience.
I do not think I was always aware that this was happening at the time. Perhaps they were not either? I think and believe that we are not always aware of what we are contributing to others, even when it is good; however this means that we are not always aware of what we are contributing to others when it is bad, and that should be a large cause for concern and a signal to us to be as aware as we can of our thoughts, actions and behaviours towards those whom we may influence.
Non-the-less, I have learned to create good out of bad and how to do better from good. I have come to own that reality as a form of self-consciousness. I try to be an active helper, a catalyst, a signpost to generosity of self. Alas I am not perfect. I have also from time to time done harm, almost never maliciously, but even to that I must confess, thankfully in small measure.
In my meanderings through many fields in life I have met, literally and metaphorically, people of a great number of sorts in a large number of countries. This has been good for me as I have been placed face to face with realities which are quite different in experience and exposure to my own. Some of these people have been a real challenge to me as their reality was from point to point quite divergeant from my own. Spending time with these people was quite literally hard on me as everything was questioned. My self-created precepts were under attack and review from outside and within, all the time being honed and modified, improved and converted because of the influence of these people.
I have not stayed in the small circle of same-age friends in small-town England where I grew up. I have not fallen into a comfortable life of familiar things which cosset and cradle one into a sense of narrow awareness. I have stood on the edge of precipices and on the top of rocky crags which I have had to struggle to climb and have been hurt physically and emotionally by some of the experiences endured reaching the high ground. I have benefitted and grown stronger.
In graduate school, learning from some good men who had some very esoteric understanding of life and ways of being, I was presented with a short poem. Its origin is unknown to me, though I think that it is likely it was penned by the man who gave it to me. I do not recall all of its words, but its meaning helped me to understand why it is that I find myself unpopular. "The more you understand, the less you can ever explain".
This can be seen as a curse! But it is indeed true. This explained to me why great men cannot ever really pass on their wisdom as an identifiable block of conscious understanding. Each and every generation must learn by repeating the learning of their forbears, but possibly because of a marginal willingness to learn, with a small increment of wisdom and then, standing on their shoulders, look further, and then repeat the cycle.
Sadly it is hard to have this understood by the young. My own son fights the notion, expressing to me that he desires to make ALL his own mistakes and learn from them for himself. He doesn't often want to know what we know. This is deeply saddening. It is part of the arrogance of youth. I can see that from age 58 and with a lot of experience in life to date. I am just grateful to my own Grandfather that he ignored this element which I am sure I must to some extent have exhibited early on and proceeded to tell me about real life and how to deal with it.
So this blog is dedicated to my Grandfather, Robert Reuben Langley 1891-1973
What he started in me I want to recruit other men and women into. I believe strongly in this and I shall speak it into being by writing here, as others have encouraged me to do, about that which comes to me day by day. I hope that others will find some value in what I write, that it will provoke thought in many ways on many subjects and add value to the lives of others.
My aim is to offer and expand my experience for the consumption of others. If you are reading this, you are welcome to email me to add your own perspective.
oldlincolnian
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