Experience is the Best Teacher

I wish that I could pass along all of the most important and meaningful things I’ve learned in life to others. But the truth is that most of the pivotal things have been gleaned from life experience. And we all know that experience (just like one’s influence), is not transferable.

Things like distinguishing the light in the fog after heartbreak leaves you vulnerable to pain; listening intently to our gut instincts and realizing that it’s never once, steered you wrong; valuing the centeredness and clarity which only comes from the deafening silence of honoring our inner voice, amidst a sea of other people’s opinions. These are the virtues and deep, meaningful lessons that my current self would have shared with my much younger iteration. My only wonder is, whether I would have listened to this 50-year old version of me? Or would I have laughed and soldiered on, undaunted? Hmm . . .

But since experience is truly the best teacher – and wisdom only comes with age, I am admittedly fortunate to have made it to an age, rank and lot in life that the younger version of me would scarcely recognize. And ohh how grateful I am to have made it to my own middle aged status. I’m not yet an elder, who’s able (or even wanting), to retire and enjoy the fruits of an entire lifetime of labor and experiences. But Lord knows that I don’t want to be someone in my 80s, still working everyday, trying to retrofit myself to times long ago passed and still yet increasingly unwilling to bow out gracefully.

Having lived this long, I’ve certainly witnessed the unpleasantness of senior executives and/or elected officials who would sooner die in office and tarnish their own sterling life legacies, than to properly mentor and anoint their successors and elect to willingly retire from service, while maintaining an honorable emeritus capacity. I have also sorrowfully witnessed the harmful implications of their own narcissism manifesting in a general disdain for their years of faithful service and at least in one case, an elected official was forced into retirement under the suspicion of scandal and his position (once revered as an esteemed, legendary and coveted space), is now being held by a charlatan with deep enough pockets to have purchased his capacity of unearned privilege, power and political influence. So, clearly the alternative to learning from experience and allowing wisdom to reign supreme is disastrous.

And while I’m far from my time as a young person, when an opinionated outlook and impatient, fiercely fiery personality was my general go to persona; I am still cognizant of my coveted position of leadership and experience and keenly conscious of my obligation to increasingly pay it forward, through targeted, meaningful mentorship’s (I actually hate this word and all of its negative white supremacist context and implications), so I will elect to embrace its African-Centered, wholistic reference of being blessed to be a Godmother to many. As this is something I was blessed to learn from and am fortunately still seeing it being modeled by my own dear Mother. Mostly, I have mellowed and matured to the extent that I opt to quietly observe, listen, and watch (almost) as much as I speak 😂. And as my outspoken personality sort of naturally takes a backseat as I age and acquire wisdom – I can certainly attest to having learned so much more!

Likewise, as educators many of us are guilty of having this sort of myopic, tunnel vision where our subject area expertise and/or personal knowledge base and belief systems intersect with our instruction. As a school administrator, I have seen this in practice and intervened more times than I can count. I have even blogged about the seemingly well meaning, highly educated and yet thoroughly racist, elementary teacher (who had formerly taught in a gifted school), but who regarded her role as an inner city, Title I school teacher as no more than a babysitting job, with which she could defy the norms of preparation and high expectations and merely spend her days reading to her students on the carpeted floor area, she had affectionately termed as “the beach”! Tuhh, if you don’t get your ass up and teach, there’s gonna be trouble. And trouble there was, until she elected to remove her biased, terminated ass from our midst rather than to pursue her baseless wrongful termination case. In any event, I’ve come to realize that there’s so much more value in learning and growing in continuous fashion and in maintaining healthy levels of humility as it regards all of the things we do not yet know.

I can only hope that as I continue to approach teaching, learning and life in this my 28th year as an educator, that I do so with a new set of experienced eyes, not fully jaded by life’s disappointments, but still much more knowing than I was even 20 years ago . . . I would love to morph into the kind of mother, teacher, partner, sister and friend who is as gracious a person as I imagine myself to be. I want to exude love, light and the delicious wisdom from experience in every professional development training experience, college course or interaction with our high school Scholar Ambassador’s. I want to take my wins and innumerable blessings as a testament to God’s ability to somehow use me as a vessel and not as a reflection of my own brilliance and hard work, though certainly I’m blessed with benefits of both and a tireless work ethic to match. But truly, to God be the Glory for all the things that go right and may I be grounded and careful enough to learn from my mistakes, losses and disappointments.

Mostly, I honestly do appreciate and long for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. As I prepare to embrace my coveted role as the elder sister who traditionally hosts our immediate family for holiday get togethers, may this Labor Day and official start of yet another school year bring smiles, memorable moments and time for thoughtful reflection and optimistic hope for the year to come. Amen-Ra, Asé and so it is.

Thank you for reading!