In You Could Make this Place Beautiful, her memoir about divorce and healing, the poet and author Maggie Smith wrote:
“My children’s father has taught me many lessons, painfully, and the pain has changed me.
“I want to become a different kind of student.
“To be a different kind of student, I need a new teacher.”
Her words leapt off the page and wouldn’t let me go. I know that I too had learned so much from pain, from challenge, from adversity.
But if I wanted to be a different kind of student, what could my new teacher be?
What if love could be my new teacher?
(So I can learn to transcend my own ego and allow love to move me, even if—and especially if—I’m resisting something.)
Or joy?
(So I can learn to sink deep into soul-satisfied contentment instead of comparing myself and my progress to arbitrary metrics, or worse, to others.)
Or gratitude?
(So I can truly and radically feel appreciation for everything in my life—the just okay, the good, the amazing, the uncomfortable, the painful. And from this place of gratitude, meaningful choices can emerge: to accept or to change my situation or my perspective.)
Or trust?
(So I can stop acting from fear but from a deep, unwavering faith that I am always—and will always—be cared for and supported.)
What lessons would I learn from these teachers?
How about you? Who do you want to learn from?
