What Schools Don't Teach
There’s a standard joke that goes, “There are only two things in life you have to do. Die and pay taxes.” Perhaps that’s why we devote so much human energy to fending off death and managing our financial resources.
Theoretically, in opposition to the joke, one could argue that someday we may actually figure out how to live forever or at least maintain the body for renewed life (cryogenics), or that a new form of revenue raising may be created so the need for taxes becomes obsolete. Therefore, perhaps someday even the joke itself may become obsolete.
What is no joke is that the one thing we all will face for certain in life, and have to deal with, is Change. How ironic, and sad, that along with all that is taught as part of formal, and informal education, we spend no time or resources in teaching how to traverse and manage Change.
Change isn’t something that happens in life.
Life is Change.
At every level of Nature, and within human nature, Change is the stuff of Life. Its how things grow. Without change there is no growth. Whether its the physical, emotional, mental or spiritual worlds we talk about, its the Process of Change that moves us through trial and error towards a more fully developed and expansive existence.
The harm in not teaching the fundamentals of Change is that so much time and energy is wasted on resisting rather than embracing it. Because there is something comfortable, even seductive, about what we know versus the unknown, we have a strong tendency to want to maintain the status quo… even if its a condition not particularly desirable, enjoyable, or supportive.
But the status quo, by definition, is “the existing order of things.” Its similar to another Latin word, stasis, which i s “the state of equilibrium or inactivity caused by opposing equal forces.” The status quo implies an accepted, or at least passive, acquiesce to how thing are. But nothing is how it is since everything is in a constant state of change.
So what’s the opposition to Change?
Precisely that it upsets the status quo!
Change necessitates being in a constant state of creativity in order to adapt to it. The only thing I know we teach as being in a constant state of creativity is Creator.
Uh-oh!
If we accept that 1) change is always occurring; 2) creativity is required to adapt to it; 3) Creator is in a constant state of creativity; then we will, by necessity, have to be as Creator is.
There’s the resistance to teaching and learning about Change! The prospect that to embrace Life and live it fully requires us to be in a constant creative state of Being, such as Creator, is more responsibility than we want to take on. Hence, our preference for the status qou.
But here’s the rub. The joke, it turns out, is on us. For in resisting Change, we defy the Law of Creation. In defying Creation, we guarantee our own demise.
So perhaps we can dispense with all the time, effort and money we put in to postponing death or trying to figure out how to resurrect the body. The short answer to that dilemma appears to be to live Life as Life Is… constantly in a state of change and thereby live forever.
Death, it turns out, isn’t an ending but a transition to another form of Life.
Of course, its only that for those who know how to transition. Who know how to Change.
I think that’s worth teaching, don’t you?