A LEARNING TASK FOR THOSE WHO TEACH

By ABBAS HUSAIN

 Sir, What is your advice for the teaching and training fraternity in these times of uncertainty? This was the provocation of the following reflections.

 I would like to take a cue from the TED CONNECTS interview [recorded on April 2, 2020] of Elizabeth Gilbert by Chris Anderson, CEO, TED. Chris asked for her take on this enforced sense of loneliness as a creative person. Elizabeth Gilbert replied: 

We do not experience the loneliness enough. We fill it with diversions, too quickly.

Instead we should look into the abyss within ourselves, boldly, without flinching from what we might see.

 This is our chance to act on Gilbert’s advice. We have an opportunity to examine our inner selves, and gauge the depths. For the teaching- training fraternity, this lockdown is like a golden envelope of time, to be filled with wisdom and grace. 

 I believe that many of us escape from this agonizing loneliness with spurious fillers. We are leaders on many fronts and our web connections are the lifeblood of our work. But that is precisely where we have to watch out. The means that have served us so well are the very instruments of distraction. We will, because we can, binge on Netflix, endlessly click on YouTube videos, download books on PDF and claim that we are learning something new. This may be true, but it is still missing the point.

 Instead of filling this time with unlimited distractions, the teaching/training fraternity should explore the contours of the “inscape” [Hopkins’ matchless word]. See the hidden corners of unfulfilled wishes, the jagged edges of denials, the shadows of fear, greed and anger lurking behind the facade of sweet smiles. It is this exploring of the self that is the final resource of our own learning and growth when we go back to serve in the world.

History gives us amazing examples of what heroics were possible when highly intelligent people were suddenly plunged in silence, loneliness, prison. We recall John Bunyan, writing the PILGRIM’S PROGRESS while in prison. This book has been read and enjoyed in an uninterrupted print run since 1678. There is Jawaharlal Nehru writing letters to his daughter, dazzling the world with his rich and uncanny grasp of world history. There is Nelson Mandela, marking his favourite passage from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar almost as a motto of his life:

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; /The valiant never taste of death but once./Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,/It seems to me most strange that men should fear; /Seeing that death, a necessary end, / Will come when it will come.”

But the genius who for me has best captured the fruits of solitude in lyrical prose is someone of our times. Thomas Merton [1915-1968] was a Catholic, mystic, activist and author. Many of his books explore the life of contemplation and the results of action that emerge after plunging into the depths of the soul.

The insight that shines like a gem in the light is this passage from his autobiography THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN. In a dialogue with the Divine, Merton complains that he has wanted solitude so much but his life has been a frenzy of activity. He laments:

My God,… the only reason why I desire solitude—[is]to be lost to all created things, to die to them and to the knowledge of them, for they remind me of my distance from You. They tell me something about You: that You are far from them, even though You are in them…. For I knew that it was only by leaving them that I could come to You: and that is why I have been so unhappy when You seemed to be condemning me to remain in them.

And the Divine responds

“I will give you what you desire. I will lead you into solitude, […] by the quickest way. […]

“And when you have been praised a little and loved a little I will take away all your gifts and all your love and all your praise and you will be utterly forgotten and abandoned and you will be nothing, a dead thing, a rejection. And in that day you shall begin to possess the solitude you have so long desired. And your solitude will bear immense fruit in the souls of men you will never see on earth.

This vision of time: of how the mundane tasks of today reach out into eternity is a blessed gift, available to those who wish to see beyond the surfaces of moments into the depths of life.

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