Are We Students, Or Teachers?

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Have you ever gotten into a heated argument with someone — a friend, family member, significant other, stranger, Facebook friend (or foe) — and at the end of it you just thought to yourself “God what an idiot! F*ck that guy/girl”?

🙋🏻‍♂️ Been there. Done that.

Why are we so quick to categorize them as wrong and ourselves as right?
As right as we may think we are and as stupid the other person may seem, sometimes right and wrong are relative terms.

Have you ever gotten so mad after one of these arguments that you had to take a few minutes to just calm down and even after you did that interaction was still on your mind for the rest of the day, maybe longer?

I’ve been there too.

Our natural reactions are to write off that person as insane, or ignorant, or ill-informed, or poorly educated — all the blame and derision is on them.

But what we forget to do is ask ourselves the most important question we can ask, a question that has nothing to do with the other person and all to do with ourselves. That question is:

“Why did this get me so upset?”

Again, this isn’t to place blame or decide who is wrong or who is right, sane or insane, well-educated or a dunce.

This is a way of detaching ourselves from what others may think or say and put the responsibility of how we feel about ourselves back in our control.
No one can make us feel dumb, insecure, not good enough, crazy, or wrong without our permission. That control is 100% in our own hands.

Think about it:

If you get into a discussion with someone and you know what you know and you’re comfortable with it and you know you’re speaking your truth and not trying to put on some BS front to look cool or fit in, there’s almost nothing someone can say that can you make you feel less-than.

When do we feel less-than in these situations?

When someone says something that makes us think “oh damn, is that true? Am I wrong? This person thinks I’m stupid.”
But, instead of instinctively getting angry and casting them off as ridiculous, take a second to think to ourselves “why did that just rile me up? Is this an area that I may not know a lot about? Can I learn something new right here?”

Our first instinct when we feel threatened in this way is to fight back and defend ourselves in order to not look weak or less-than.
But again, no one can make us feel that way except for ourselves.

Admitting that you changed your mind or that you don’t know something or that you don’t have the answer isn’t weak, that takes strength! It takes strength to fight that natural urge our bodies have to not show vulnerability and weakness (because back in the day that could have cost us our lives).

Being able to step back like this instead of lashing out not only takes strength and courage, it takes empathy, non-judgement, vulnerability, understanding and a lot of practice.

It’s a lot easier said than done, but I try (and sometimes fail) to go into situations like these with an open mind and no presumptions. I try to put myself in the other person’s shoes as best I can and seek to understand them without trying to hammer my point home. I go in trying to learn something — about them or about the topic in discussion — without attempting to teach them or change their mind.

This is where the teacher and student part come in.

I believe we can learn something, even if it is a small trivial thing, from every person we interact with, no matter who they are. Whether through a personal story they share, or an opinion they have, or a discussion about a topic.

Even if what we learn is that the person we interact with is a lot more alike or a lot more different than us than we thought.

But, as much as we may learn from our interactions with others, I don’t believe that’s where the most important learning comes from.

I believe that the most important learning that we can do is from the greatest teacher we have: ourselves.
We can be teacher and student all at the same time.

How?

Remember how I mentioned about asking ourselves “why is this upsetting me so much right now?” I believe that if we really take the time to sit in silence and really dig deep as to why something made us feel a certain way, we can find a treasure chest of clues and answers to some of our deepest questions.

Some of the stuff we dig up may be scary, it may uncover some unresolved issues and repressed feelings that we had hidden away hoping to never have to deal with again, but these things don’t stay hidden forever.

They come through in our daily interactions, most times subconsciously. They are a part of who we are whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. The only way we can figure out who we really are and be the best teachers we can be, is by being the best students we can be… to ourselves.

Let’s take some time to sit with ourselves and ask introspective questions, not just react to our initial emotions without really thinking about why we may think, speak, or act a certain way.

We will never know all there is to know in the world, we will never read all the books, we will never get all the degrees, we will never achieve all the acclaim and titles… even though some of us will desperately try.

Instead, let’s focus our learning on an area where so many of us neglect, have no care or just don’t think it’s that important: ourselves.

If we don’t truly know ourselves, what makes us feel alive, what saddens us, and why these things make us feel this way, how will we ever know who we truly are? If we don’t know who we truly are, how can we truly know anyone else?

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Previously published on Medium.

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