In one of the groups I belonged to a few years ago, the leader would often say to us, “That won’t get you there.” And he said it about almost everything.

Take blaming—it’s so easy to say, not my fault, not my job, he did it, she did it. But does that do any good? Maybe, but I’ve found it works better for me to walk forward than to walk backward. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve been a blamer, still am, sometimes—I mean all the problems of the world would go away if George W. wasn’t president . . . wouldn’t they?

But seriously. I’m thinking of schools. And kids. And teachers. And how they sometimes don’t seem to fit together. And someone blames one or the other or all. But what if it’s no one’s fault? What if we noticed, and acknowledged, and respected, that each of us is different and one size does not fit all? That “normal” is a figment of someone’s
imagination and no one has ever or will ever wear that shoe?

And what if we noticed that things in our culture contribute to how some kids are in school? That things like TV and videos and games that go a hundred miles an hour ramp up a kid’s adrenaline and pulse rate? And that expecting him or her to sit still in a classroom after that is absurd? Or that some kids are just more wired than others and will always have a hard time sitting still? What about instead of calling that a disorder or a deficiency we call it different? Considering that the number of kids who are like that is growing at a phenomenal rate, we might soon have to call the ones who aren’t wired different.

And then there’s the gender problem. I’ve kicked that dead horse lots of times but I’ve come around to believing that some power far greater than me put all of us here and we are in no position to decide if one or other of the sexes is necessary or not. One of the things I’ve learned in the last few years is that it takes a lot of energy to get angry and to fight, and energy is a precious and limited resource. Frankly, I’d rather use mine to create than to destroy, and I’d rather work with others toward our common betterment, than against anyone to our common detriment. Forgive me if I’ve said this before, but one of my favorite sayings is, “No one gets to heaven unless we all do.”

So what will get us there? Well, Jesus was an early group leader who said, “Love one another.” Another thing I’ve learned recently is loving is easier than fretting. When I focus on someone’s good stuff, the stuff others like about him instead of the stuff I don’t like about him, it makes life better for me and for him.

No, loving others won’t make the problems magically disappear overnight. But loving makes my life easier to live, makes me able to feel content sometimes instead of anxious all the time, and that makes it easier for me to do just about anything.

But will that get me there? Well, that other group leader, the Buddha, said, “There is no there. There is only here.”

And yes, loving gets me here.


March 15, 2006
© copyright Maggie Wilson