A Different perspective

When I was learning pedagogy under Rabbi Efriam Oratz, I remember him once asking the group of 30 students “Who here liked school as a child?” One hand went up. The rest of us turned to him and wondered “What’s wrong with him?”.

R’ Oratz preceded to teach us one of the fundamental lessons in Education that stuck with me until today – Just because we have this perception that school experience overall isn’t enjoyable, doesn’t mean that that has to be the case. If we want to change the standard and transform school into a fun place to be spending ones days, we can. It starts though, with a shift in our perspective. If we laterally see things as only going in one direction, we are doomed to walk that same path.

The same holds true of all things real. A while back I took to studying people’s faces on the train and bus and I noticed that with the exception of very few, the norm was to carry a negative expression on the face. Not openly angry or sad but for the most part people have this solemn expression showing the weight of the burdens they are carrying around with them. If you ever saw someone smiling, simply smiling without being provoked, we would think they are strange like there is something wrong with them. It most likely would even make us uncomfortable.

Everyone has struggles and worries that occupy our thoughts. There is no way around that, that’s simply the make-up of life. We also have this almost instinctive unwritten rule that we need to live our lives stuck in our difficulties. That it is not only acceptable, but expected that we carry those heavy problems around with us wherever we go.

Who says it has to be that way? What determines how satisfied or not I am in life? How influenced am I by what I perceive in my surroundings?  Are we a passively or actively living out our life’s story?

We may not be able to control others, but I am the author of my life’s story, with G-ds help, and I can guide my outcome. The first step is not to allow myself be pulled along by the current that society is being dragged by. Then I can decide if I want to follow suit or not, and what the best path for me is.