How To Make Sense of This Prophetic Expression
ADVANCE CONFIDENTLY!
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” ~Helen Keller
If ever there was a phrase that captured the essence of what was the year 2020, I believe this might be it. As we look back, as we reflect on everything that happened since March of 2020, there is an underlying feeling that all of the things that were always in plain sight, people either simply ignored, or refused to pay attention to.
It’s not until something begins to affect the greater numbers of our society that people start to notice things, that people start to actually see. Prior to the pandemic, poverty was in plain sight. Prior to the pandemic, there existed an epidemic of underlying illiteracy in the richest country in the world.
How is it possible that in the year 2021 we still have schools across this country that don’t have the necessary resources they need to serve the students of their respective communities.
The children of this crisis are the ones who will be responsible for the future of the world. There is an incumbent responsibility amongst all adults to come together and make sure that these children have everything they need to make sure that in time, their children have a world to grow up in that’s better than it currently is.
We can continue to pretend that there are no major challenges facing our future or we can start asking better questions. What kinds of better questions could we ask? What if we started by asking the individuals in charge of all the schools across the country about what their number one unmet need is as it relates to providing inspirational education to the children?
Teaching children the basic fundamentals of reading, writing, science, and arithmetic, will only ever take us so far. How different would things be if we were also able to teach them lessons of compassion, understanding, curiosity, confidence, empathy, and so many other lessons that we currently are not taking the time to show them.
If thinking is what separates us from all the rest of the animal kingdom, then maybe we should spend some more time teaching children who are incredibly resilient and much brighter than we give them credit for, how their brains actually work. Operating from a place of fear or a predetermined curriculum about what we can and can’t teach kids is what’s keeping us from making any major advances with the very kids we claim we want to educate.
Education isn’t about facts and figures and taking tests and memorizing things. Education is about teaching problem solving. Education is about providing the tools children need to take on the challenges of the next century.
Clearly, we know that the level of thinking that led to the place that we currently are is not the level of thinking that will create a different place for the children to grow up in. With the population of the world rising at an alarming rate, children must be educated in the process of creative problem solving. As a matter of fact, maybe we should change the language around the word problem because when we label something we negate it.
“No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” ~Voltaire
What if we started calling what are perceived problems, opportunities instead? For example, if there’s not enough food to feed everybody, that simply means there’s an opportunity to find a better way. What if we empowered the children with the ability to create solutions where it seems none exist? And where do these solutions come from? We need only look to the great minds that have produced some of the major advancements in our world to know that it comes from creative capacity, from the ability to think outside the box, from the ability to imagine solutions for challenges that don’t yet exist.
The word imagine, in and of itself is a unique expression. The word translated in a literal sense simply means, to bring an image in. It’s an expression of how as human beings we think in pictures yet use words to describe what we see. And therein lies the conundrum. We can’t describe what we are unwilling to see…
Would there be anything wrong with teaching children that their world doesn’t have to be completely full every single moment of the day, that it’s OK for them to take a pause, to breathe, to reflect on the experience of their day. Are children educated in matters such as these? Is anyone talking to the children about the importance of self-care, of taking time to focus on or think about the things that most excite them? Or to just sit silently in a park and listen to the birds, watch the squirrels play, or to see the colors that emerge when winter turns to spring?
Mary Oliver once wrote a poem about a grasshopper. Most people know the most famous line from the poem, but I don’t believe the majority of people understand the nature of the poem, what the poem was really written about… Because of the profound nature of the final line, the message of the rest of the poem is often missed.
The quote everyone is familiar with is about what we will or won’t do with our one wild and precious life. The unknown part of the poem is a conversation with a grasshopper. Questions are asked. Questions that don’t necessarily have an answer, but we’re contemplated anyway for the purpose of contemplation, for the purpose of observation in a moment of presence free from distraction, focused only on the subject at hand, the grasshopper. Here are the other lines from a poem that was so richly written.
The Summer Day by Mary Oliver.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Let’s take the time to teach our children about what it means to put words together in a sentence written to evoke the senses instead of proper syntax and grammar, better yet, let’s do both.
Imagine a world where we teach children the importance of silence. The power of affirmations, of using language with purpose and intention to invite more of what we want into our lives. What if we could teach children to see what does not yet exist and because we taught them this skill, they created a future better and brighter than the one we currently live in. What if children understood the physiological reasons for exercise and that because we empowered them to understand this, we ended the current obesity crisis prevalent throughout America and many other parts of the world. What if we taught children not just how to read but how to tell a great story and why that’s important to the future of the world. And what if we taught them to write down the reflections from their day so they could have a written record of all the things they were able to experience. What if they were afforded an opportunity to also reflect on the impact of their decisions with the understanding that they never had to repeat an undesired action again if they chose not to, because being aware of it gave them another choice?
What if we taught them that every day is a blank canvas, an opportunity to write a fresh new script for how they choose to experience the day? What if we grounded them in the understanding that the one and only thing we have control over, is our thinking and how we choose to respond to the events unfolding around us?
And what if we taught them that choosing to see, or choosing not to see, sight or no sight, is a choice?
If we chose to do this, then I think we could end blindness and there’s no telling what kind of world our children might create.
Wouldn’t it be great if we taught our children how to both see and then say, I see you! And even better, wouldn’t it be great if they understood why that’s important…
Let’s end blindness. Let’s do it together!
Let’s empower our children to understand that they are the change agents of the future, the stewards of the Universe!
Written in honor of my grandchildren…
By the way, if you enjoyed this article, I believe you will thoroughly enjoy my next book, Advance Confidently. I look forward to sharing it with you on the 4th of July.
Keep Pedaling, Keep Going, Keep Growing!
Advance Confidently!
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In Gratitude,
Bobby Kountz, Author, Speaker, Sobriety Scholar, Inspirationalist!
PS. You can find out more about me here. You can find my book on Amazon.
