LIFE TEACHERS, GURUS, AND PEOPLE
WITH HEADSET MICROPHONES
BEFORE YOU CHOOSE ONE, KNOW FIRST THAT LIFE ITSELF IS ALWAYS GOING TO BE YOUR BEST TEACHER
Teachers are interesting things. As we all know, not everyone is wired to be a teacher of any sort. And then, when we enter the world of life teaching, an ambiguous place of being able to choose whatever we wish to believe, a world where many of the most profound truths are often both familiar and obvious, we have have created a ripe ground for anyone with a spark in their eye to garner our attention.
All this being as true as it may be, teachers are still important things. Much like friends, we can’t always assume that the ones we start with are going to be the most empowering ones in the end. Teachers have tremendous responsibility in the lives of others regardless of what it is that they teach. A person who fails to properly inform others, to translate information, can alter the life of an individual, at least until that individual discovers what and/or how they should have learned from square one. A lousy math teacher could perhaps dissuade a given individual from pursuing a passion for engineering, or perhaps bring someone to unnecessarily question their aptitude, while a great math teacher could be the match that ignites the next great architect, engineer, or inventor. We all have been through some form of schooling. So, we all know through our personal experiences that some people are just wired to be teachers, while others are content just going through the motions. Of course, there are those people that should never walk to the front of a classroom, even though they often do. This, most likely, is because they ended up committing to a path before fully understanding their best contributions as individuals.
IMHO, people who practice the craft of teaching about life have a tremendous responsibility. While even a great life teacher cannot guarantee that a given person is going to absorb a given lesson, let alone even listen, they can certainly come to the table with more than a few seminars, some cheerleading pom moms, and a business card under their belt. The landscape of life teaching is quite broad. A good psychiatrist is a form of life teacher. So is a good minister, rabbi, counselor or cleric. I would argue that there are many bartenders that end up being life teachers involuntarily, some of them pretty good at it. Gurus fall under the realm of life teachers even though many of them don’t like to say much. The whole point of this conversation is that if we should define ourselves as souls traveling through this life in vehicles shaped like human bodies, then life teachers are not unlike car mechanics. Car mechanics are notoriously people that need to be put into question at all times. A great car mechanic is worth their weight in gold, but it can take time, not to mention disappointment to find a good one, unless we get lucky. Most people have, and always will, tend to make a bee line to the things that they feel will either give them more money or a sense of self importance, whether that is earned or not. So, a large part of the path of learning about the art of life is honing our ability to know what it feels like to hear truth and what it feels like when we are being misguided which often is when we are listening to people who are either feeding our desire for money and self importance or their own desire for the same. Some of us are innately wired with this ability while others are…how do you say…suckers.
Life teachers that only teach about money and success are not life teachers. They are money and success teachers. Most of them haven’t a clue how to run or build a business. They tend to excel at jumping up and down and inspiring people to believe they can make more money. In regards to true life teachers, even the best ones, there is always a Wizard of Oz element present, even to myself. At the end of the day, we all have to earn our stripes, find our own courage, and there is not one single powerful revelation that we will have that will not feel like we already knew it, it's that we just weren’t quite sure or perhaps quite ready to embrace it.
We can listen to teachers, but we should not cling to them. Many of our teachers, our mentors in life, will eventually fall away like old branches in our lives. Many will hold certain pieces of our puzzle of understanding and not others. We will find they have given us what they are meant to give and then we may start to notice all of the imperfections that lie around whatever wisdom they have given us. This is no failure on anybody’s part. This is how it should work. We learn and if we own our lessons, we graduate. We absorb what we need and then we go and put things into practice. This leads to our first red flag in terms of engaging with life teachers, regardless what guise or umbrella they may sit under. If you should feel possessed, like you are owned by someone and cannot leave, or change your mind without someone else’s divine approval, you should probably move quickly toward the exit door. This is not to say that a given teacher should let others dictate how they teach, or that a given teacher cannot require a certain degree of discipline, rules and compliance to certain practices. It simply means if something isn’t working for you, if it does not resonate for you, a good teacher will always say “Okay. I get it. This isn’t working for you. Good luck, I hope you find something that does.”
Teachers of life may have many different personalities, but the core lessons are the same,. Some are more dry, straight forward and perhaps place an early emphasis on discipline. Some have what seems like endless patience, maybe a little more loose, while others have very little patience at all. Some can be very compassionate and perhaps too accommodating, as there are times when we all need a good kick in the butt. Still, no true teacher wants to possess anybody or hold them hostage and every wise teacher in the world knows that at the end of the day they are simply helping others uncover their own answers. This is never a messiah game, nor an exercise in who is holier, or less holy than another.
Life is humbling. I say this all the time. To this point, a true life teacher should be someone who inspires others, but who also humbles them. It is not a failure of any person to humble us, so long as it comes from a place of wisdom rather than ego. In fact, while strength, wisdom and resilience may be our best tools in life, our best foundation is built on humility. It is in the recognition of just how fragile we, and others are relative to the grand scheme of things. It is the on going recognition that things inevitably change, and that our ability to adapt is every bit as important as our ability to know. And that no matter what we learn, what we accomplish, or how evolved we may think we are, life will always pull us back down to the earth. to this drama of life, just to test our humility.