A friend of ours, a school teacher, informs us that in recent years there has been what amounts to a minor exodus of students away from the public school system in favour of private schools. Sometimes, this move is initiated for religious or other valid and well thought out reasons. Often, however, the reason for this migration involves a sort of misguided nostalgia. The belief is that private schools, with uniform requirements, adherence to a stricter academic curriculum more focused on basics such as grammar and arithmetic, and a higher emphasis on respect for authority, are somehow better able to prepare our young for the supposedly grim realities of life. Somehow we have come to believe, as a society, that we should return to some mythological golden age, when children were sheltered inside a bubble of rigid discipline and encouraged to cast off frivolity as they prepared to enter the working world.

The public school system is not immune to this sort of backward-looking thinking. Over the years, we have seen schools place more and more emphasis and funding on subject areas such as math, science, and computer science, whilst funding for other educational areas, such as fine arts, music, drama, and physical education has been steadily reduced. The thinking is, I suppose, that math and computers are serious business. Mastering these subject areas will help our young people become successful citizens and contribute to our country’s economic success.

I’m not sure whether this sort of thinking has any merit. By hammering our kids over the heads with math texts are we really going to create more productive citizens? More importantly, though, I think this emphasis on getting back to the basics betrays an essential sickness at the root of our society. We have somehow convinced ourselves that exposing our children to art, music, food, theatre, physical education, and poetry is all very well, but not truly essential. If it is necessary to make a choice, it is those luxury programs that will be first to get the axe.

It has often amazed me that we spend so much time teaching our children the things that we think they will need to know later in life. We are obsessed with teaching them grammar and math, and developing their accounting and computer skills. If they don’t show aptitude in those areas, we panic that they will come to some sort of a terrible end.

But in truth, technology is becoming more and more user-friendly every year. Think about grammar-checking and spell-checking computer applications, for instance. On the other hand, we spend relatively little time and energy teaching children to enjoy the pleasures of going for a walk in the woods; creating a piece of sculpture or music; preparing and enjoying a healthy, delicious meal; or simply enjoying the company of others. In reality, it is those things that we seem to value so little that are the best and most important things in life. Without them, we become only lifeless drones, shackled to computer desks. Is this the sort of future success we want for our children?

On the one hand, this is a blessing. After all, who needs a boring life of complacency and stagnant comfort? Human beings are immensely complex creatures, with soaring imaginations and brains that are hard-wired for overcoming challenges and delving into mysteries. On the other hand, though, sometimes all this continual learning can wear a person’s batteries right down.

In my life I am both lucky enough and unlucky enough to be faced with a seemingly never-ending barrage of learning opportunities. These challenges are present for me on every front of my life. They are there in my career, my relationship, my academic endeavours, and (perhaps above all) in my role as a parent.

In all these classrooms of life (both literal and figurative) I have come to understand that the most important element of success for me is having an understanding of myself, and of the way that I learn things.

A good friend of mine, an educator, once told me that each and every person has a different way of assimilating and processing new knowledge. She told me to try and come up with an analogy to describe the way in which I am successful at learning new things. For her, she told me, understanding new things was a lot like baking a cake: it was a process of gathering and organizing the ingredients–the information she needs in order to come to an understanding of something new–and then carefully blending them together, using patience and precision.

When I asked my husband about this, he said that, for him, learning something new and difficult is a lot like fishing. It is a matter of casting a line into the water, and then going into a state of relaxed awareness, and waiting for the ideas that are circling back and forth below the surface to finally ?bite? and take hold. (On the other hand, he tends to relate most things to fishing.)

For my part, the process of learning is a lot like riding a mountain bike up a particularly steep hill. It is really just a matter of gearing down and maintaining my endurance until I’ve made it all the way to the top. Sometimes, of course, It’s not like that. Fortunately, there are moments of swift clarity, when understanding comes like a bolt of lightning. Usually, though, It’s more a matter of perspiration and stick-to-it-iveness. But at least I know.

I had no idea that, later in life, I would not be able to eat these foods without being ruefully aware of such things as saturated fats, GMO farming practices, depletion of agricultural lands, factory farming, or potential for mercury contamination.

Likewise, I remember blissful mornings spent in Sunday school, drawing lambs and loaves and fishes on sheets of construction paper. I remember making a thick, white beard for God (who was sitting on top of a cloud in the sky) out of cotton balls. Never once did I have to worry about the checkered legacy of the Church–its witch burnings, inquisitions, residential schools, intolerance, and cultural genocide.

When my daughter’s class has been visited by an RCMP officer, there is a part of me that is proud of the fact that she respects this officer and her uniform. Small-town girl that I am, there is this part of me that desperately wants to believe in the virtues of peace, order, and good government. Unfortunately, I have seen and heard too much in my life to completely buy into this anymore.

I have seen too many reports of police brutality, and of political corruption. I have seen the way that our laws and our government are used by the wealthy and the powerful to ensure the poor and marginalized are kept in the shadows on the edges of society. I have seen way too much in my life to believe that any sort of power can possibly be absolutely benign.

One of my struggles, as a parent, is to ensure that my belief that society needs to be changed, and that voices need to be raised in protest, does not turn into bitterness or cynicism. I still believe, very strongly, in the beauty and wisdom of the people of this country. I believe that, despite the recent political turns to the right, Canadians are caring and sensible people. Above all, I believe that things can be changed for the better when we use our minds and voices.

I no longer have the luxury of naïveté and innocence, but I’m still filled with a childlike sense of hope for the future.

Because of the magnetic attraction that exists between my spirit and the natural world, I have spent pretty large chunks of my life walking and camping in the wilderness, either alone or with my family and friends. One of the most wonderful benefits of these experiences has been the many, many encounters I have had with various forms of wildlife. I have kayaked beside dolphins and seen humpback whales breaking water off the coast of northern B.C. I have seen eagles and hawks soaring overhead whilst lying on my back gazing up into the sky. I have had encounters with deer, moose, elk and wolves, and bears, both black and grizzly.

Of these, the only ones that have truly left me feeling frightened are the bears. Over the years, I have heard numerous stories from fellow backpackers about nerve-shattering experiences with these magnificent and powerful creatures. And, of course, there are always the horror stories of fatal mutilations and near-death encounters that have become part of our collective understanding of the natural world.

My own encounters with bears wandering down creek beds in Alaska and on forest trails in the Monashees have been at a more or less comfortable distance, and not very traumatic. Still, I have a pretty healthy respect for their power and unpredictability; I would not for the world ever go out of my way to get anywhere close to one.

This wasn’t always the case. I remember when I was a girl; I would listen with rapt attention to the stories of family friends who had been lucky enough to see bears in the wild. It was my fondest dream, at that time, to one day live by myself in a cabin in the woods and watch grizzly bears playing outside my window. I would dream of sharing my food with them, and perhaps even going for a wild bareback ride across a mountainside, hanging onto the fur on a bear’s neck.

One day not long ago, I was sharing a story of a backpacking adventure with a friend’s seven-year-old niece. A true animal lover, she was mesmerized by stories of the wildlife I had seen, and was particularly fascinated by details of my encounters with bears. She told me that one day she would become a famous zoologist, and would spend her life in the woods, studying them. They would be her only friends and companions. She would feed them bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese.

What really got to me was the look of sheer wonder in her eyes when she told me about this wonderful dream. It reminded me of the wonder I always had as a girl toward the wilderness. It was this sense of wonder, the desire to have adventures of my own, that first propelled me outdoors. Later, of course, this fanciful view of the world was tempered by experience and common sense. Without that initial sense of wonder, though, I would have missed out on so much.

I think there is a broader lesson in this. It is a lesson that I try to keep in mind for myself. Although wisdom and caution are vital to our safety and survival, they are only a part of the necessary ingredients for a well-lived life. They are the yin, if you like. The yang–the desire to step outside and leap into the magic of the world–that most of us have when we are children must always be respected, and be allowed to thrive within us.

I can’t see any sign of her. Then, a movement up near the very topmost branches catches my eye, and my heart skips a couple of beats. She’s perched up there, maybe 70 feet or a little more above the ground. From this distance It’s difficult to be sure, but it seems like she has a grin as wide as the Cheshire cat’s. Then I hear her laughing at my drop-jawed surprise.

Every parental instinct I have is screaming inside of me to yell at her at the top of my lungs. I don’t, partly because the last thing I want to do is spook her right now. But there’s also another reason. The other reason is that I happen to know she is as agile as a squirrel when She’s climbing. And because I consider it a sacred part of my duty as a mother to stop myself from letting my fears become hers.

It is so common to go through life filled with fear. Most of us are afraid of so many things: heights, public speaking, being in a relationship, not being in a relationship, death, life. I know people who would never dream of swimming in the ocean, for fear of sharks and other lurking aquatic life, or because they are concerned about contracting some terrible disease from the “filthy” water. I know others who have never been camping because they are afraid of dirt, spiders, and grizzly bears. The funny thing is, these same people would think nothing of strapping themselves and their children into cars and hurtling along city streets and highways. I have never known a single person who has been seriously injured whilst swimming in the sea or sleeping in the woods, but every day there are grim reports of automobile fatalities.

Perhaps the problem is not the fact that we are filled with fear, but that we are afraid of the most ridiculous things. We run screaming from a mouse, but think nothing of the deadly chemicals hidden away in our hot dogs and fireproofed wall-to-wall carpeting.

Overall, though, I don’t think fear is a very useful adaptive reaction to any sort of danger. It tends to cloud our perceptions, dull our creativity, and rob us of the initiative to protect ourselves. Again and again, we warn our children to be careful on the swings, to never talk to strangers, and to stay right where we can see them. All we succeed in doing is ramping up their anxiety levels, and stealing away their ability to evaluate situations on their own merits.

It is for these reasons that, when my daughter Jessie climbs quickly and easily from the tree and runs across the grass to me, I let my heart rate return to normal and remind myself that a big part of loving your children is learning how to have faith in them, how to sit back and watch them take flight without constantly reminding them of the hardness of the ground beneath them.

Eventually, completely exhausted and frozen to the marrow, we would trudge the several blocks (they seemed like miles!) back home. We would sit around the kitchen table and exchange our stories, drinking cup after cup of steaming hot chocolate. To this day, I can remember almost exactly the delightful feeling of my numb fingers slowly thawing out, of the sweet warmth seeping back into my cold, tired body.

The other memory involves those occasions when I would find myself alone in the house. As part of a family of six children, and living in a house that was routinely filled to the rafters with friends, relatives, and out-of-town visitors, these times of solitude were rare and quite precious to me. I remember sitting in the overstuffed corduroy chair in the living room, reading books or writing letters. I recall that sometimes, I would just sit there and daydream, listening to the sound of the house rafters creaking, or watching rain cascading down the windows. I would imagine that I was a lonely hermit woman living in the deep, dark woods. Eventually, of course, the spell would be broken, as my family would come exploding through the front door. But then, recharged by the silence, I was always glad to see them.

It seems to me that there is a profound life lesson wrapped up in my memories of those childhood days of icy slopes and silence. The warmth and light of my parents? kitchen would never have seemed so wonderful to me if it hadn’t been for the hours of freezing cold that preceded them. The stillness and solitude of the empty house would have been just boring, or even depressing, if they hadn’t been contrasted with the three-ring circus that was the normal state of my girlhood family life.

The lesson I try to keep in mind from this understanding is that experiences in life should be savoured and enjoyed for their unique and specific qualities. All the states of experience we find ourselves in are subject to change. All things, including our emotional states, are shifting and temporary. Likewise, all our states have their own unique beauty, and this beauty can only be understood when it is experienced in contrast to other, very different states. Just as the feelings of warmth and stillness are nothing unless they are contrasted with cold and chaos, happiness and pleasure can only be truly savoured when we have known what it is to be sad and in a state of discomfort.

The only downside to that delightful sort of day is that I have never really learned a darn thing about myself or about life during those times. Sure, on those perfect days I have avoided unpleasant emotions and states of mind, such as anger, confusion, frustration, and sadness. On the other hand, I have not been forced to grow. My mettle has not been tested, and I have not had the transformative experience of having to overcome adversity and rise to the challenge, be it minor or dire.

Despite what the books might tell me, everything I needed to learn in life was learned during those times when I was heartbroken, defeated, wracked with grief, or mired in feelings that I was sure I would never be able to rise above. I have learned far more from rash decisions, fears, anxieties, and personal failures than from any self-help book, corporate training seminar, or university course. If I have any wisdom or worth as a human being today, it is because I have fallen flat on my face time and again, and learned the valuable lesson of how to laugh at myself.

If we are truthful with ourselves, we will realize that it is not comfort and harmony that allow us to reach our potential as human beings. We do not transcend our limitations when everything goes our way. The times that we grow and develop are the times when everything seems to be falling down around our heads. If our first love walks out of our life in the middle of a bleak February rainstorm, or we are fired from a job that we really needed, it seems as though nothing will ever again be right.

It is only days, weeks, or years later that we begin to have an inkling of the deep, rich layers those minor or not-so-minor catastrophes have added to our beings.

If You’re not careful, you can begin to imagine that these big-ticket events are the only things that really count in life, and the rest of what you do, all the day-to-day stuff, is just filler. It’s this sort of thinking that paves the road to mid-life crises, and the sense of worthlessness that blights so many people’s retirement years.

The truth is, though, that there are not very many of these pomp and circumstance-filled times. And when they do arrive, they are often not the way you expected them to be. For instance (to be blunt) for every fairy-tale wedding that comes off without a hitch, I’ll bet there are a hundred brides who feel they are suffering through a living nightmare of stress, anxiety, sleep deprivation, and many other forms of emotional torment.

One of the truly wonderful things, for me, about getting older and hopefully a little bit wiser, is my ever-increasing appreciation for the smaller, quieter moments that enrich my life. I have a display case containing several trophies, the winning of which seemed so important to me at the time. I have nicely framed academic credentials on my office wall, and several photo albums filled with pictures of exotic holiday destinations that my husband and I have travelled to. No tropical sunrise I’ve ever seen, though, compares to the sense of wonder I felt when my daughter and I got up early one morning, walked to the beach six blocks from our home, and discovered what seemed like tens of thousands of purple starfish clinging to the rocks exposed by an extra-low tide.

I have stayed in ritzy European hotels, but I more clearly remember childhood nights spent roasting weenies and camping out in my aunt and uncle’s backyard. Likewise, no West End theatre show I’ve seen compares to my niece and nephew’s puppet shows, performed on a stage made out of an old refrigerator box. I have eaten in five-star restaurants, but by far the most memorable meal I’ve ever had consisted of burnt toast and orange juice (why it was memorable is a whole other story!).

My point is, every single day of our lives is filled with unexpected pleasures. When we focus too much on the big dreams, the big goals, the hoped-for big events, we run the risk of letting potential magic slip through our fingers.

Let me give you an example. Amongst the circle of friends and acquaintances I have known for many years, it was a sort of given that outdoor activities were a significant part of most of our lives. For years, there was never any trouble organizing a pickup soccer game in the summer, or finding a group of people to play touch football, toss around a Frisbee, or just get outside for a picnic.

There was not really an agenda to any of this. It wasn’t competitive. It wasn’t related to any health concern (although reduced risk of heart attack and enhanced vitality and energy were always recognized as a beneficial side effect).

Above all, it wasn’t done in order to shape up for bikini and swimsuit season. It seems to me that my friends and I got outside in a loose, unstructured kind of way as much as we could just because, well, we enjoyed it so much.

Now, it seems to me that everyone is so busy all the time. Ask about getting together for a game of baseball or bocce at the park and everyone starts flipping through their agendas or consulting their electronic time-management oracles. Want to organize a picnic down at the river or a long bike trip in the country on a Saturday afternoon? Apparently you had better start getting the logistics nailed down a good 60 days in advance, because everyone is too caught up in a whirlwind of activities to do anything even remotely spontaneous.

Certainly, it is not that the people I know are any less active. Goodness knows, between Pilates, yoga, kids? soccer, hockey, floor hockey, basketball camp, outdoors club, yada, yada, yada, there is no shortage of activity going on. And good for the participants, I say. It all sure beats sitting around watching the telly or carrying on virtual relationships over Facebook, etc.

I can’t help but feel, though, that we seem to have lost our sense that the best kinds of fun are the simple, spontaneous events that are pulled together in the span of a few minutes on a weekend afternoon. I can’t help but feel that we would be a little better off if we, as a society, just backed off a little bit from our agenda-driven exercise schedules and allowed ourselves a bit more time for unstructured spontaneity.

More recently, she has been conducting storytelling and creative-writing workshops for senior citizens. She does this at community centres and at senior citizen residences. This gives the seniors she works with an opportunity to develop and share stories from the rich experiences of their lives. Although I have not had an opportunity to sit in on one of these sessions, she tells me that there have been several times that their stories have been so profound that they have sent shivers up her spine, or so heart-wrenching that she has been in tears.

Her latest project is to develop a joint storytelling experience involving both children and elders. She feels that both groups would benefit from the unique and contrasting forms of energy and experience that each has to offer.

I have often wondered about the way that our society has a tendency of isolating and segregating people by age. It is a strange phenomenon in the Western world that 10-year-olds are mostly in the company of 10-year-olds, teenagers are mostly with teenagers, middle-aged people hang out with other middle-aged people, and senior citizens are shunted off to the margins of society. It seems to me that when this happens, we lose so much of the potential for inter-generational sharing of wisdom and resources. Surely it is important to realize and remember that young children are not just unformed adults. They are fully formed, vibrant entities, complete with a world view that needs to be expressed and heeded by those older than they are. By the same token, senior citizens are not over-the-hill adults. They are conduits of experience, filled with ideas and knowledge that they could not possibly have possessed when they were younger.

By getting young and old together, under the right circumstances, who knows what sorts of magic and synergy might be created, what benefits might come about for all involved. More power to my friend, I say.