Our Greatest Teacher

One day while walking with a mentor, as some rain sputtered and splattered, I recounted the details of a recent interaction that had left me with many questions. I spoke about the fears that had surfaced after this interaction and I strained to derive some coherent meaning from what I had experienced. I wanted this mentor to offer sage advice, which she did. Yet in that interaction I realized I wasn’t actually looking for wisdom or guidance that might lead me to and through life’s greatest mysteries. I was looking for clarity, for answers. I wanted this mentor to tell me what I should do next, how I should respond. I longed for her to strip away the mystery of what I had experienced to alleviate my anxiety and comfort me with some certainty. 

She was not interested in offering easy solutions, answers or certainty. Instead, she laughed, not with some patronizing, just-wait-until-you’re-older-and-wiser sort of tone, she laughed with wonder at the mystery of human interactions as she invited me into curiosity, into mystery and into slowing down. I wanted to stop feeling anxious and uncertain and she invited me into the anxiety and the uncertainties.

I was invited to face the underlying fears, sadness, anger, confusion and so on. She invited me into the tension in between my desires to either make too much of one interaction or to attempt to forget the interaction entirely. I was invited into discomfort, to hold loosely what I had experienced and make room to live with and into the questions that arise. 

Life is our greatest teacher, she shared, all the moments of life have something to teach us. The clenched fists, the laughter of a child, the glare from a passing driver, the sun peeking over a valley bathed in fog, the slow-motion dying of a loved one, the surprise phone call, the longing to lash out at a coworker, the tears you had been trying to suppress, the calm amidst a chaotic encounter. Every moment has something to say if we let ourselves show up to the moment. 

I continue to be grateful for the subtle and seismic shift that began that day while walking in the rain. In taking the invitation to welcome my anxiety, discomfort, desire for certainty and fears I find a growing sense of freedom to be less afraid of what I cannot control or understand. In practicing an openness and willingness to embrace and learn from the questions and the pain I find more capacity to notice joy and the beautiful parts of life as well as the courage to invite others into the fullness of what their own lives are trying to speak.