I’m in a cognition class this semester and currently looking at childhood developmental stages. As I’ve been studying today it just struck me how much time we spend on childhood development and the structures of thought, the stages of thought, and the capacity to think in our young children. And rightly so. It is incredibly important to understand how children learn since that knowledge enables us to support them in their growth and development into fully functioning, ethically grounded individuals.
.
.
BUT, we don’t have the same kind of developmental study of adults. There’s a certain logic to that. Once we’re deemed capable of thought we are expected to do it regularly, with great care, and if we don’t we typically get labeled with professional terms (e.g. autism, aphasia, TBI, dementia) or social terms (e.g. idiot, jerk, numbskull, fool) to explain why we aren’t thinking or acting the way society expects us to. Sometimes the professional labels help, if they lead to better understanding and more appropriate habits. The social labels never help.
.
.
But have you ever considered that as adults our learning doesn’t end, it simply shifts from developmental to experiential? And that it still requires the same amount of support and consideration from friends, family, and the wider culture?
.
.
For instance, in my own life, I am essentially the same “Vernie Lynn” who lived inside my head when I was 15 or 16 years old. HOW I think has not changed much. But WHAT I think has changed over the years based on my experiences and interactions with the world around me.
.
.
I wonder how our view of ourselves and others would change if we began to look at one another as students passing through the stages of experiential development the way a child passes through cognitive development. Instead of looking at each other the way we more commonly do: as all-knowing experts who are falling
down on the job and not living up to our potential, privilege, understanding, etc. What if we looked at one another as learners? As curious knowledge seekers?
down on the job and not living up to our potential, privilege, understanding, etc. What if we looked at one another as learners? As curious knowledge seekers?.
.
There’s no linear timeline to place these life experiences on, we can’t force them on people, and we don’t all experience all of them. But we all go through many of them, don’t we? A child of 10 may have already lived through violence, starvation, abandonment, and terror while a 98 year old may have never experienced those things. But we all eventually experience loss and disappointment.
.
.
Grief-Loss-Friendship-Heartbreak-Success-Disappointment-Love-Terror-Loss of physical capacity-Responsibility for a child-Betrayal of loyalty-Horror for another’s actions-Dismay-Our hopes fulfilled-Our hopes shattered-Acceptance of death, our own at some point, or the death of someone else-Gratitude for someone else’s involvement in our life.
.
.
These are, of course, only a few of the things we pass through in mortality, but they cover quite a bit of what we learn by simply being alive and being part of a family and community. We share such common human experiences, and yet intolerance for our ability to deal with those shared experiences is still so rampant. Our suffering too often drives us to despise those who suffer instead of comforting them in their pain and helping them to heal and move past it. The bullied too often become the bullies themselves instead of the defenders of the innocent. We despise the learning that made us who we are because we misinterpret learning mistakes as weakness, and so we despise those who seem to be as weak as we were when the experience that brought us pain happens to someone else.
.
.
We look at our politicians, leaders, celebrities, and heroes and expect perfection of those imperfect people. We ask them for both comfort and growth, even though they seldom happen at the same time. We demand they do something about whatever terrifies us, yet crucify and excoriate those willing to stand up and learn leadership by doing, trying, and pursuing in fields that no one can fully prepare for until they are already in them and doing the work they don’t yet know how to do.
.
.
We expect our leaders to be gods, all knowing and all powerful, and expect our Gods to be a fairytales; handing out gifts, favors, and wishes as a reprieve from the learning which we were given this life for. We are, essentially, with our frustrations and our divisiveness, destroying the experiential learning our society needs. We are all, each and every one of us, moving into an unknown future. We don’t know which faction, disease, invention, or discovery will shatter and change forever our perception of ourselves and our place in the stars next. We expect our leaders to move out into that darkness, with no more wisdom than we have, out into that unknown ahead of us all and yell back directions to us once they get there. And if we don’t like it, or when we find out later, with all the illumination of greater details and the clarity of hindsight from the progress they made, that they also made mistakes, we call their heroism evil and tear their efforts down while holding the Cliff’s Notes and maps they left for us in our hands.
.
.
I have to conclude, when I see this happen over and over again in the lives of well-known individuals and in the lives of friends and family, that we don’t really value gaining understanding and knowledge. What we truly value is the result of education. We value the wealth, not the toil that gained it. We value the peace of prosperity, not the labor that brought it. But we can’t have one without the other. We can’t progress without mistakes: individually OR culturally. We can’t get things right without running into the ways we can get things wrong. And we MUST accept that we are all students. Every. Single. One. of us. We must learn to find the meaning in our mistakes if we ever want our mistakes to pave the way to our eventual progress.
.
.
I’ve often wondered how it is that the elderly among us can be so patient in the face of the commotion and tumult of the world. How they can be so often calm in the midst of tragedy, loss, or uncertain events. I used to
think they were just too old and tired to get worked up about it all. And maybe that’s true for some, but I’m inclined to think that they have learned enough through their many years of experiential learning to be patient with the people who make the mistakes, compassionate towards the people who bear the brunt of those mistakes, and wise enough to give both a chance to move forward and experience more growth through more experiences.
think they were just too old and tired to get worked up about it all. And maybe that’s true for some, but I’m inclined to think that they have learned enough through their many years of experiential learning to be patient with the people who make the mistakes, compassionate towards the people who bear the brunt of those mistakes, and wise enough to give both a chance to move forward and experience more growth through more experiences. .
.
We’re all students here. We’re all learning, growing, changing, and becoming. We’re going to get it wrong sometimes and that’s okay. Our mistakes can be very meaningful and give us a lot of information about where we are in our desired trajectory. We’re going to get things right sometimes and that’s okay too, we just can’t fall prey to the belief that getting a 100% on quiz 1 is the equivalent to getting 100% on the final exam. We’re all students, we’re in a classroom together, and we could all use the support and encouragement of our fellow students. Are we the kids that say “hey, you can do this!”, “don’t give up!”, “I believe in you, keep going!”? Or are we hecklers on the sideline, undermining one another’s growth with continual criticisms and churning up past failures to prevent present success?
.
.
I think that our egos often get in the way of seeing ourselves as students. We want to be the teachers, not the learners. We want to be the ones in charge, not the ones who support the leader. We want to be the student body president, not just really good students in our own right.
.
.
Years ago my brother and sister-in-law gave me a t-shirt that said “The truly educated never graduate”. As a 32-year college senior I can testify to the truthfulness of that! 😆 And as a student of mortality I can say even more emphatically: it’s true. Until the day I “graduate” from life, I look forward to learning everything I can in this amazing classroom of earth, people, plants, and animals. There is always, always, always more to learn.
Share this:
