Swimming Lessons
I’m about six years old and I am at swimming lessons. I have been here everyday for a week and I have yet to get in the water. I stand paralyzed on the pool deck staring in horror at the big body of water. The swim instructor, Valerie, is gently trying to persuade me for the umpteenth time to get into the water. My mother is in the stands yelling to Valerie, “throw her in or I’ll come down there and throw her in myself”.
The interesting thing about this is that my mom has a deathly fear of water. As she is fond of saying, she gets disoriented in the shower. So why would she want Valerie to chuck me into the drink so mercilessly? For precisely that reason. My mom was determined that I would not go through life with the same fear of water with which she lived.
I don’t really remember this incident. It is family folklore but apparently I did end up in the water (with “help”) and I have never looked back. Once I got in, I did not want to get out. I was a fish, just like my big sister, my big brother, and my dad. In fact, it is safe to say, that I have some serious water-loving genes. I swim regularly and the rumours persist around my transformation to Mermaid during full moons.
Are you confused? How do the scared kid and the Mermaid fit together and what, pray tell, is the point of this story?
My point is this: my natural inclination is to love water and feel perfectly safe in it. My learned behaviour was to fear water. My mom never told me to fear water, I just felt her fear and adopted it as my own. That’s what kids do. They feel our responses to things and make unconscious interpretations based on those feelings. I felt my mom’s fear of water and decided at an unconscious level, that water was scary.
Thankfully, my mom did not allow me to stand pat on my erroneous interpretation about the scariness of water. She made sure I got past my adopted feelings and found my truth.
I think it is really important for all adults to be aware of this phenomenon. We all have our fears and insecurities. We may be very good at hiding them from other adults because adults can be fooled by camouflage. Kids can’t. They’re not paying any attention to our carefully constructed “presentation”. They are little sponges, hanging around, soaking up our true feelings and making sense of that information as best they can.
I want to be more aware of the signals I send to kids. If I think some hang up of mine is affecting someone in my area of influence, I have to be able to talk about it. I care enough about the kids in my life, to push myself out of my comfort zone and talk about my fears. In fact, being willing to do that, has been the catalyst for actually looking at and addressing some of those fears.
And I continue to examine my fears to make sure they are my own, not someone else’s that I adopted long ago and carried with me into adulthood.
Challenge for the day: pick a swimming pool you’ve been avoiding and jump in. You never know . . . maybe you’re a mermaid too!
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
Compassionate education
Compassion in Education
Compassionate education might be an oxymoron to some people. I’ve talked to lots of folks who would say it was; who look back on their own schooling as a time and place devoid of compassion for their individual struggle or story.
I think compassion drains out of our classrooms when we spend more time seeing a group in front of us than we do a collection of individuals. This is one of the most important challenges for educators; to hold a micro-society in one hand – where kids learn about give and take, getting along, problem-solving, co-operation, and so many other key elements of living with others. In the other hand, we hold a jostling crowd of unique individuals, each with distinct needs, strengths, interests and histories.
A compassionate classroom acknowledges and strives to respect this balance. I believe compassion is a practice – one that can be nurtured and strengthened in ourselves; one that can be fostered in our students. The Dalai Lama says that “true compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason. Therefore, a truly compassionate attitude towards others does not change even if they behave negatively.” *
However, even the Dalai Lama concedes that developing this kind of compassion is not easy.
In order to transform compassion in myself from a conscious response for a select few to an unconscious and universal practice, I put myself on a four step program. I imagine myself moving steadily through these steps, but of course, I jump forward and slip back.
Step 1: I know someone and in their story, I find something which elicits my compassion for them.
Step 2: Although, I am presented with behaviour which does not elicit compassion, I can access my compassion by getting to know this person, hearing their story and finding something which brings my compassion forward.
Step 3: When confronted with a person who invokes a negative reaction in me, I can temper my response because, cognitively, I accept that everyone has their own story, challenges, and pain whether I am aware of it or not. Therefore, they deserve my compassion.
Step 4: I approach all people with compassion: I have internalized step three and it is no longer a cognitive process but an automatic emotional response.
What step am I on, you ask. Well, as with most things, you could say I’m on a sliding scale! I spoke with a friend about this topic and she thought she was a stage 3 or 4 with the population of troubled youth she worked with but a 1 with their parents. It’s a process. But the important thing is to be engaged in making it a practice.
And, again, as with all things, I have little hope of developing compassion for others if I am unable to treat myself with compassion. Perhaps the hardest is first; if I can find compassion for myself, with full knowledge of all my faults and foibles, it will be so much easier with others. Aren’t we always hardest on ourselves?
Why is it so important to bring compassion into our lives and into our classrooms? Because we are losing compassion in our world. It is not a right to be treated with compassion in our society, even though every human being would choose to be treated with compassion. We have a tendency to decide who deserves compassion and dole it out like a reward or sometimes, a bargaining chip.
Last year the provincial police called my home to solicit donations for their fundraising campaign and when I asked what the money was for, I was informed that the money would be split between preventative youth initiatives and a legal fund working towards harsher penalties for offenders. We seem to be at a crossroads as a society, torn between our collective compassion and our collective fear.
Each of us has experienced the power of compassion, both as recipient and giver. We have seen how change can occur in stuck places, how a shift can come when true compassion is accessed. We have likely all experienced being really upset with someone and thinking that we could never forgive them, but somehow we find compassion for their situation, whatever that is, and our feelings shift. Or we are able to focus on them as a person and not fixate on the perceived wrong they have done us, and we find compassion . . . and things change.
The generation of kids we are working with, will take charge of our collective future. Imagine what could be if they did so with the deep belief that every human being deserves compassion, regardless of their ideology, their past, their choices or even their behaviour.
“Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not a luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for our human survival.”
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama
*(Compassion and the Individual retrieved May 24, 2007 from www.dalailama.com/page.166.htm)
Also of interest:
Nurturing Compassion & Educating the Heart
Vancouver Dialogues 2006
http://www.dalailamacenter.org/vancouverdialogues/2006/nurturing.php#nurturing
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."
Compassionate education might be an oxymoron to some people. I’ve talked to lots of folks who would say it was; who look back on their own schooling as a time and place devoid of compassion for their individual struggle or story.
I think compassion drains out of our classrooms when we spend more time seeing a group in front of us than we do a collection of individuals. This is one of the most important challenges for educators; to hold a micro-society in one hand – where kids learn about give and take, getting along, problem-solving, co-operation, and so many other key elements of living with others. In the other hand, we hold a jostling crowd of unique individuals, each with distinct needs, strengths, interests and histories.
A compassionate classroom acknowledges and strives to respect this balance. I believe compassion is a practice – one that can be nurtured and strengthened in ourselves; one that can be fostered in our students. The Dalai Lama says that “true compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason. Therefore, a truly compassionate attitude towards others does not change even if they behave negatively.” *
However, even the Dalai Lama concedes that developing this kind of compassion is not easy.
In order to transform compassion in myself from a conscious response for a select few to an unconscious and universal practice, I put myself on a four step program. I imagine myself moving steadily through these steps, but of course, I jump forward and slip back.
Step 1: I know someone and in their story, I find something which elicits my compassion for them.
Step 2: Although, I am presented with behaviour which does not elicit compassion, I can access my compassion by getting to know this person, hearing their story and finding something which brings my compassion forward.
Step 3: When confronted with a person who invokes a negative reaction in me, I can temper my response because, cognitively, I accept that everyone has their own story, challenges, and pain whether I am aware of it or not. Therefore, they deserve my compassion.
Step 4: I approach all people with compassion: I have internalized step three and it is no longer a cognitive process but an automatic emotional response.
What step am I on, you ask. Well, as with most things, you could say I’m on a sliding scale! I spoke with a friend about this topic and she thought she was a stage 3 or 4 with the population of troubled youth she worked with but a 1 with their parents. It’s a process. But the important thing is to be engaged in making it a practice.
And, again, as with all things, I have little hope of developing compassion for others if I am unable to treat myself with compassion. Perhaps the hardest is first; if I can find compassion for myself, with full knowledge of all my faults and foibles, it will be so much easier with others. Aren’t we always hardest on ourselves?
Why is it so important to bring compassion into our lives and into our classrooms? Because we are losing compassion in our world. It is not a right to be treated with compassion in our society, even though every human being would choose to be treated with compassion. We have a tendency to decide who deserves compassion and dole it out like a reward or sometimes, a bargaining chip.
Last year the provincial police called my home to solicit donations for their fundraising campaign and when I asked what the money was for, I was informed that the money would be split between preventative youth initiatives and a legal fund working towards harsher penalties for offenders. We seem to be at a crossroads as a society, torn between our collective compassion and our collective fear.
Each of us has experienced the power of compassion, both as recipient and giver. We have seen how change can occur in stuck places, how a shift can come when true compassion is accessed. We have likely all experienced being really upset with someone and thinking that we could never forgive them, but somehow we find compassion for their situation, whatever that is, and our feelings shift. Or we are able to focus on them as a person and not fixate on the perceived wrong they have done us, and we find compassion . . . and things change.
The generation of kids we are working with, will take charge of our collective future. Imagine what could be if they did so with the deep belief that every human being deserves compassion, regardless of their ideology, their past, their choices or even their behaviour.
“Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not a luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for our human survival.”
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama
*(Compassion and the Individual retrieved May 24, 2007 from www.dalailama.com/page.166.htm)
Also of interest:
Nurturing Compassion & Educating the Heart
Vancouver Dialogues 2006
http://www.dalailamacenter.org/vancouverdialogues/2006/nurturing.php#nurturing
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."
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