In all my years as a human being I've learned one thing more than anything else: that being a human being means that there is always the most pressing need to learn and grow wiser. If you were to ask me what it means to grow wiser, I would say that it means to learn lessons by conquering fears. Growing in hope and growing in learning are closely related things, though not the same. If knowledge is power, then fear is ignorance. If I were to serve this higher knowledge to its moral end-of-the-rope, I would tie a knot where the teacher is and make as much good teaching as I can before I die. One of the greatest gifts in life is to create life and be it's greatest teacher - as parents we hold the place our children will walk into someday. Simultaneously, we pour every hope we have into our children, which means sometimes teaching lessons about fear. Where we put our children together to have new hopes put into them by hope-experts, that is where the Profession of Teaching becomes a reflection of the idea of 'teaching'.
In our society, one ought not inspire hope by running around creating fear lessons for everybody in the world. Except of course if you life depends on it - Emergency Human Resuscitators have fear training and filters, as do military, and many other emergency services. These groups' effectiveness at "fearing" someone into motivation/actualization/re-encouraging a calm center of bravery amidst a storm of physical or spiritual chaos are the legendary reasons they persist, despite their debatable outward repugnance. Most people expose themselves to some sort of fear training/fear dulling. Religion, horror movies, sports, and hazardous jobs are all known to produce people of character or burnouts from stress. These jobs are crucibles that test the mettle of people and break down all the barriers they've constructed regarding some particular dimension of their life. Fear only begets fear which only begets ignorance, which only ends up in less wisdom for the world. So if you want to hold true to your moral center, you have to fight fear though it discomforts. A healthy body requires some theoretical amount of rigorous use. A healthy spirit is signified by the fearlessness of cause and justifiably self-righteous courage. A healthy spirit requires some theoretical amount of rigorous use
Lifestyles which do not promote the health of the body take a dimension of capability away from people. Our collective effort is no longer worth as much if our collective effort has atrophied through apathy or luxury or plenty. Pulling our own weight is no longer possible - we have less towing capacity per kappita than previous kappitas, and we have borrowed our apathy, luxury, and plenty from the next ten generations at least... ALL THIS means that we have to pull our weight again, but our task has become harder - we now have to pull the weight of our selves, our parents and grandparents, our children, and their children's children on down the line for the next 9 or some other odd number of generations. Why did things get so drastic seeming? So we could buy lots and lots and lots and lots of stuff without consequence for as long as possible. I'm sure the concentrated dope-money of the Aristocracy-yet-to-be thanks us for our sacrifices. But hope remains yet, you story-loving listeners.
Lifestyles which do not promote the health of the mind are insidious ruiners of people and the downfall of civilizations. Every nation feeds itself physically and mentally. To god, we are naked pudgy ape descendents with complex facial organs and communication patterns, not the self-proclaimed hierarchy of virtue and order we claim to be at s'his feet. Technology has been brewed into service of our babble-ings. Math is the only babble we may yet have that isn't tainted by the biochemical progeny of ideas and words. By worshiping the stars and the shapes of the moon and sun, and knowing the planets and comets, and seeing the blueprints of life at each level, down to the grand unified level of the tiniest yet thing, the most complex yet, the most qualities of sides and explainations that cover all the turf with its unity in elegance and is magnitude in differences - by doing all that, we exercise our spirit with learning though the lessons not hit us in our face or our lives. Even if these lessons only hit us in our minds, they are the very things that will make up who we are, and where I implore everyone to think; every lesson you face will determine how fit or sick this society and geography will become; every choice that you make could help somebody else, or you, but the right answer will probably ever remain 'which choice benefits the most people' to which the answer you find is born of no ignorance, fears, hatreds, but we remain instead spiritually advanced in our enlightened worship of stars and trees and air and pure water. What makes a Saint is sometimes giving up all things for the greater good. Sometimes what makes a saint is capturing courage for masses of people who need to find courage. Sometimes what makes a saint is most kindly honoring that which was sacrificed despite the lack of kindness which destroyed it in the first place. Everyone can be a saint in someone else's life. The more we act for good, the more good we become, and then the place that our children step into, and their children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children will step into too.
I solemly release myself of the guilt of the price that was paid in History's blood to allow all these ideas to come so easily to my lips. Everyone dies, and the world will always be full of suffering. As long as I hold the lessons of the hard road of History in my heart as I speak and make the decisions of every day, I'm sure I will make some progress along this road. Then, one day, if fate is kind to us all, our children's children's...so on to the last set of children, will look back at all the struggle that continued on after I died and say, "well, I forgive him for not getting everything fixed, even though a lot of people suffered because he couldn't get everything right, after all he was born with an imperfect legacy, just like me, and look at all the progress he made despite his many setbacks." Likewise I forgive my own history and our collective history for all its flaws. I consider the matters over and done with, except where they bear some small issues to the present to be decided for the immediate future - that's life afterall.
Hope lies ever as the cream, on top of any foment and toil we swirl amongst each other in. Story telling is a form of hope, but only when combined with deep, still, or massive listening. We excel at certain types of story-telling, and we excel at certain types of listening. As we guide our children into the next generation of possibilities in a universe made microscopically of possibilities, let us accelerate their learning in the best kinds of story telling and the best kinds of listening. We'll seek not to censor, destory, defame, or demoralize, but only to nurture, to listen, to light, to walk, and to teach, that way better tomorrow is right on top, sitting at the tips of all our children's tongues.
