For most of us, the phenomenon “teacher” is limited
to designated educational environments: we attend schools
at various levels, and experience lecturers of divergent qualities
and in diverse areas, whom we nonchalantly generalize under
the name “teachers.”
However, perceiving teachers outside the educational environment
is usually not something one regularly does. It usually takes
a well-covered part of the road to maturity for most of us
to comprehend that every circumstance, person, or encounter
of any other nature we have, should be seen as a teacher in
our life. Yet, it is a plain and simple truth: We learn from
all sources we meet, everyday anew. And, while we clearly
define some of these sources as teachers, we choose to label
others as “nuisances”, “misfortunes” ,
“pure luck”, “coincidences”, or anything
else. Still, they, too, are our teachers: all those situations,
people, and other phenomena we come across on our way to increased
insight in our purpose in life. It is therefore unfortunate
enough that the very awareness of our teachers being all around
us all the time does not cross too many minds in today’s
world. If this awareness had been established broadly, the
world would have obviously been a much more peaceful, intertwined,
and reciprocally respectful place to dwell.
That being said, it is even more unfortunate to conclude
that there seem to be even fewer minds that, once having realized
and accepted the concept of continuously meeting teachers,
finally advance to the most crucial state; the most challenging
awareness, and perhaps one of the most lonely moments, which
is, the emergence of the realization that, at a certain point,
teaching evolves to a different level, and thinking starts.
The foundation of this insight is that teaching generally
means absorbing, and mere absorbing can only happen so long.
There comes a time in the life of every deliberate seeker
that the absorbed must be digested; the taught must be thought
through; the teaching must be enhanced by thinking; and perceptions
must become one’s own instead of one’s teachers’.
It is from then on that the learner metamorphoses into a
thinker, and starts perceiving life, matters, people, and things, as factors that
should be accepted as irrefutable parts of the universe of
which one is just as much an element as them. It is from then
on, too, that the acceptance of good and bad, dark and light,
and elation and devastation, as indisputable counterparts
of one another, takes place. And thus comes peace of mind
with the knowledge that some things will always be, and that
one cannot be without the other. It is also from then on that
the seeking, imitating, hating, worrying, hurrying, and mirroring
in the strife of comparison with others ends, and that reflection
with the self begins. It is then, thus, that the need to live
up to any standard disappears, the final contentment
with one’s being emerges, and the salvation of a life
is established.
Dr. Joan Marques
2 January 2006
Joan Marques emigrated from Suriname, South America,
to California, U.S., in 1998. She holds a doctorate in Organizational Leadership,
a Master's in Business Administration, and is currently a
university instructor in Business and Management in Burbank,
California. Look for her books "Empowe the Leader in
You" and "The Global Village" in bookstores
online or on her website: http://www.joanmarques.com
