Life as we know it...

If life is a school, we are all students. Some get A's, other's drop out early, and it is hardly ever completely fair.

 

Just imagine life as a school (it’s a cliché and a classic, I know, but bare with me). We enroll at birth, and attending is not optional. Sometimes we get detention, sometimes we have mean teachers and we hate our lessons, and then we have the good days. There’s field trips, A’s, passions for our favourite subjects whatever they may be, and lessons we are grateful to have learned.

Some of us graduate sooner than others, but no one gets a perfect diploma. We get remembered. Some are forgotten. People and actions, they all continue and constitute our heritage in the school of life. And so our own lessons learned can sometimes be passed down without the bruises and agonizing study hours we ourselves spent trying to figure everything out.

If we imagine life that way a lot of things spring to mind. The first, and most important, is that everybody enrolling is an equal student. We all deserve the same attention, we all must pass certain classes, we all have to participate. And we all enjoy the hard and the easy parts, some receiving more of one than the other. Like at school life is never fair.

Established thus far is then that we all have to attend and we all attend as equals. How the school treats us and how much we can ourselves bare to work and struggle for good grades and experiences differs from person to person. Graduation then? Some of us get kicked out much too soon, and the events are not always just. Some of us choose to drop out…

If life is a school we are all students. Maybe that is why we mess up so often. Why we like to bicker and cause tantrums in the classrooms we share, and why we insist on forming cliques, dividing ourselves into categories based on power, popularity, personality, backgrounds, economic situation, etc. Could it be why we have to re-learn certain lessons repeatedly, and even when we think they are clear we still sometimes pick the wrong answer?

Maybe we are all students, new and old. Generation after generation enrolls and we all find ourselves having to learn certain lessons by ourselves, the hard way, the hit-your-head-into-the-wall-enough-times-not-to-do-it-again way.

And the teacher, life itself, is not reachable on speed-dial or e mail. Our questions are embedded in ourselves and in the world, our school, and it is up to us to find the answers (right or wrong), sometimes with the guides left by the alumni before us as assistance.

Hey, maybe we should ask for smaller classes. In this case, though, I doubt that would change much…

© 2006 Prudence

Reviews

[Kevin D. Thurston]

FYI, Enroll. You were spelling it with only one L.

I like the second to last segment. "Our questions are embedded in ourselves and in the world... and it is up to us to find them, sometimes with guides left by the alumni..."

A logical and well-explained connection of two large ideas. Very conversational.

[Maria Retz]

Beautiful. I really like that you compare life we school. It is

the hit-your-head-into-the-wall-enough-times-not-to-do-it-again way.

Ha ha, I liked that one, it made me laugh pretty much.

Great job.