This began as two separate gratitudes, one for my teachers and a second for my students. But, really, they go together as one thought. I am grateful for the other sentient beings and even non-sentient ones that have helped me on the path. It really does not matter much whether one is in the “student” seat or the “teacher” seat. They are interchangeable. The “other” does not even have to be aware nor even willing to be the teacher or student. There really is no way to be a good teacher without learning from your students, and symmetrically there is no way to really learn from someone or something unless you are intermittently teaching as well.
We learn from people and dogs and rainstorms and collapsing riverbanks. We teach to dogs and people and all of nature. We are always learning and growing. We cannot be stagnant; that would violate the laws of nature. Always moving, vibrating, wandering, diffusing, dying, birthing, growing in randomness and or exchanging energy.
I am grateful for the accidental or unplanned or even sometimes terrifying or horrible lessons and teachers and students as I am for the wonderful or planned or fortunate ones. How often have I thankfully gotten injured to really understand my limitations or where the pitfalls around me might be lurking? Thank God I graduated from college during a recession! Graduating during a great expansion would have been fine as well. And, though it would have made me quite nervous (I imagine) to not have graduated, that would have taught other lessons, opened other doors, made other paths more likely.
Mrs. Platzke’s special assignments for me and Chris in fifth grade and Professor Denn teaching me momentum transfer (giving the single best lecture I ever saw). Emma, my ever loving emotionally intelligent furry four-legged best friend, I still miss you little girl! Getting dangerously lost on a hike, producing a tasty homebrewed California Common and a horribly disastrous lager. Seemingly developing a Midas touch with respect to market timing followed by years of worse than coin-flipping decision making and predictions (with commensurate performance)! We learn from it all, we teach others always. The teaching nudges the learning which influences the teacher thus bubbling through the student again. Then the music stops (well not stops, nothing ever stops), pauses, and the everyone scrambles for an empty chair, with teachers and students and both and neither melding. And being a father. Oh, being a father!
Trying to learn guitar and silk screening and multiple languages (none really well, and my Spanish sounds like I’m speaking Italian, which I speak even less of than my Spanish). Taking apart my Walkman to clean it when I was in high school and destroying it inadvertently. Having great first dates curiously not lead to subsequent dates? Having a “D” in Electrical Engineering 100 halfway through the semester even though I was studying incredibly hard. Never having gone to an away camp nor been on a baseball team. Being the last person cut from the JV basketball team Sophomore year. Why do the Cure only come to my town only when I am not there? I will never miss the opportunity to see another Miles Davis. I learned this in time to see Dizzy and Betty Carter and BB King thankfully!
Tony Gwynn and Jimi Hendrix, quantitative easing (forever?), negatively priced crude oil and free HULU subscriptions. Sushi failures. Homemade soup always tasting good. The tree that I felled that grazed the house and the many that did not. What did the tree learn from this? Did the house learn anything…? From either me or the tree?
There is no best path, no best teacher nor student. There is no worst version of these either. You say Yin, I say “to-ma-to”. All become steps (or stepping stones) on the path. Thank God for them all, and for you and for me!
