Life Lessons

The Rules for Being Human - by Dr. Chérie Carter-Scott

Rule # 2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called "Life on Planet Earth." Every person or incident is the Universal Teacher.

I think I’d restate the first sentence with, "You will receive lessons." The learning part is optional. Apparently.

Let’s think about school. You’ll remember that school was a "building upon" process. In other words, if you didn’t learn to add, you couldn’t learn to multiply. Cursive writing came after printing. The process of learning presupposes that a lesson was learned prior to the present learning.

I suppose we know this. Things get interesting, however, when we fail to remember that this rule of thumb applies to all of life. Especially to the life lessons we consistently refuse to learn.

One of those funny "non-learnings" is the one around letting go of failed relationships. It gets described in the literature using marriage stats. The stats show that a lot of people separate and divorce. Many find the dating game to be intimidating – you’d want to look (as we do in the "List of 50" booklet) at what went wrong, and make changes.

Changes are tough, though. So a not inconsiderable number of people hook up with their former partner. There was a cute moment on the opener of NYPD Blue last Tuesday . Jill was considering getting back together with her ex. She’s talking to Diane about it and says something like, "It could work this time." Diane replies, "Like the last six times?"

The stats say that, of the people who do get back together, 70% are apart within a year or two. The reason is simple. The people involved retreat into the familiar, forget what they learned, and are soon dancing to a familiar, if not too helpful tune.

Which is not to say it can’t work. It is to say that it won’t work if the lessons aren’t learned. More on this in a couple of weeks.

It’s also tough to see difficult situations and people as teachers. As I talked about in "The List of 50," my former marriage to "Sue" was a learning experience from the get go. My clarity about my role in the relationship came while I was in training to be a therapist. I began to see the games and manipulations I was engaged in. "Sue" was instrumental in helping me to see myself more clearly. In that process, I found a bunch of stuff to work on.

Often we get into a loop of blaming whom we are and where we are on our parents, our genetics, "luck," – and we see ourselves as stuck, without options. Or, predisposed to be a certain way, howling, "people will just have to put up with me." The other, more elegant approach is to see each of the situations in our lives as an encounter with a teacher.

One of the myths perpetuated in our culture, and especially by advertising, is that we are supposed to be "happy." The idea is that our lives are supposed to be free from problems, crisis, difficulty. Often, as an off-shoot to this kind of thinking, is the idea that, if something has gone "wrong" the person involved must have done something wrong. It’s the old "I wonder what God is punishing him for?" bit.

I’m not so sure "happy" – as in "free from distress" -- is a goal I would seek. Going back to the existential argument, life, we want to remember, is a terminal disease. While we’re here, far from running from our lessons – we’d do well to embrace them for the gifts that they are.

I mentioned, last week, my client and the Bodywork and the "old, dark sludge." We also exchange a fair amount of e-mail, in between sessions. She wrote the following:

I really have been dying inside for some time now and even writing these words I'm having trouble seeing the screen. It's that acceptance thing again. First accepting that (my husband) died and left this material plane and now accepting that I've actually grown used to being dead myself while still existing in this world. I've been protecting myself and the kids from moving towards a new life out of woozy, sucky fear...it's the sliver in the foot thing! I guess the time has come for me to take out my sliver.

She’s found the teacher in the lessons of her life.

So, what are you failing to confront? What pattern keeps you stuck? Who are you declaring to be "enemy" as opposed to teacher? What situation are you refusing to deal with – seeing it as "just who you are?"

There are lessons. There are teachers. All around us. The difficulty of the lesson is in direct proportion to the resistance you put up to dealing with the lesson.

You could just learn the lesson. Imagine.