Hi Friends-
I’ve been thinking about teachers lately, and that’s the subject of this week’s essay: “Expanding the Aperture of Your Curiosity.” One of my great teachers has been the writer E.F. Schumacher and his book Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered.
Schumacher talks about the power of ideas, and how they serve as instruments for our thinking — how we think with and through them, so much so that we cannot think outside of them. How culture hands us a set of ideas, which then shape the way that we think about everything — ourselves, our relationships, and especially our creativity.
And if we can zoom out and really see those ideas then we have the power to change them — to move from limiting ideas to more expansive ideas. To learn more, listen to my new podcast episode, "How Our Ideas Shape Us".
FYI: I also have some exciting announcements coming out soon about the future of the Hurry Slowly podcast and this newsletter, so stay tuned for more on that.
In the meantime, this is the last day to save $60 on registration for my RESET course, which teaches a heart-centered approach to productivity. Click here to opt into a mini-podcast and newsletter series and get the discount code.
Scroll on for an essay about curiosity, teachers, and navigating this whacky curriculum called life. Plus, links spotlighting Kathleen Hanna, Alice Munro (R.I.P.), Salman Rushdie, and what’s it’s like to have AI friends.
Much love,
Jocelyn
Expanding the aperture of your curiosity
On the urge to look for teachers who can explain this confusing curriculum called “life” — and how they might look different than what we expect.
Lately, I’ve noticed myself using the word “teacher” quite liberally, where the person I am referring to usually doesn’t fit the typical definition of a teacher. I might be referring to an insight that came through when I sat in meditation with a sacred object (i.e. the object is the teacher) or a revelation that I had while working with plant medicine (i.e. the plant is the teacher).
On the one hand, it’s a convenient verbal shorthand that allows me to not have to explain how or why I’m in conversation with something that may be considered a little “out there.” On the other hand, it’s indicative of a new willingness to expand the aperture of who and what is “allowed” to be a teacher — who I am willing be curious about, listen to, and learn from. Who gets to be part of the curriculum.
When we are young, the place that learning happens and the teachers who are there to guide you through it are very clear and obvious. You go to a classroom, and the teacher has a curriculum planned out, and if you pay attention and exert some effort, you will typically do well enough to advance to the next level.
This same model repeats year after year (with some variation) from when we are in pre-school until we finish high school or university — which adds up to something like 15+ years of learning where the teacher, the curriculum, and how you advance is pretty clear.
Then you graduate and… everything is different.
Where are the teachers? What is the curriculum? How do you “advance to the next level”? None of these things are clear.
In reaction to this somewhat confusing situation, many of us have the very understandable impulse of wanting to find a teacher or a mentor who might have a little insight into what exactly the new curriculum is. We want to find someone who can help guide us, or even just point us in the right direction.
We’ve all heard those anecdotes — in a podcast interview or a speaker talk — where someone describes a mentor who appears at just the right time to help them “advance to the next level,” so to speak. And, if you’re anything like me, you might have felt envious as you listened.
But all through my 20s and most of my 30s, I never found such a person. In practice, it took me until I was 37 years old to find anyone who I would call a “teacher” in the sense I was imagining after I left school.
That said, when I finally met this person, I had no idea that she would become a great teacher for me. It’s only in hindsight, a decade on from that first meeting, that I can see how much of what I know, how much of the way that I show up, comes from what she modeled.
Point being: We may not even recognize the teachers that we have so longed for when they finally appear. The relationships and interactions from which we learn the most might not show up in the ways that we imagine. The curriculum may not unfold in the ways that we expect. And I can guarantee that you aren’t going to get a syllabus.
(But wouldn’t that be nice? I would love to know what classes I’m taking right now… Personal Power & Energetic Sovereignty — Intermediate? An Intro to Aligning Your Body with Your Imagination? Releasing Anxiety – Extra Credit Summer School Edition?)
As my friend Sebene has written, quoting her friend Jeff Warren: “This is the curriculum.”
“This is the curriculum affirms that, through some mysterious enrollment process, each of us does get a different program. That our personal syllabus and schedule are always changing. That, often, we don’t understand the lessons until we’ve gone through them. That we are always learning something new. That life itself may be the real magic boarding school.”
Because we receive such clear conditioning about the way that teaching works when we are young, we imagine that we will find a Teacher with a capital “T” — that it will be obvious when we find them — but what if the curriculum is more distributed, more mysterious?
What if we could gradually open the aperture of our curiosity wider and wider? What if we could expand the purview of when and where we are willing to learn — and from whom?
I’m not just talking about expanding into the woo-woo here (thought I am also talking about that) — what about recognizing, acknowledging, and elevating all of the “teachers” who we’ve encountered through books and literature, for instance?
As Ursula K. Le Guin says, “Literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we’re visiting, life.”
I’ve learned a lot about the operating instructions — for life and for writing — from Alice Munro.
I rarely get emotional when I read obituaries, but I cried when I read about Munro’s passing this past Tuesday. I have more books on my shelf by her than any other author.
Reflecting on why I felt so undone by the news of her death, I realized that it was because deep down I consider Munro to be a great teacher of mine.
Her writing taught me the power of saying the quiet thing out loud — the thing that everyone thinks but is too ashamed or embarrassed to say.
She taught me about the grace that comes from naming that thing, which allows the reader to feel just a little bit less alone.
She taught me that stories about small, intimate, ordinary things could be big. That it doesn’t take a novel’s worth of words to make a profound impact.
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Editorial Note: About two months after I published this essay, the horrifying news broke that Munro's daughter was abused by her stepfather and Munro stayed with him even after she learned of the abuse years later. It's hard to witness the curtain being pulled back on the reprehensible behavior of a writer that one has admired; this reflection by a Canadian writer captures a lot of those feelings for me.
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Our teachers are everywhere — waiting to be noticed, waiting to be attended to, waiting for our aperture to expand to encompass the lessons they have to offer.
My ancestors are my teachers.
My family members are my teachers.
My friends are my teachers.
My podcast guests are my teachers.
All of the healers I have worked with are my teachers.
All of the books I have read are my teachers.
All of my favorite artists are my teachers.
The plants are my teachers.
The forest is my teacher.
My dog is my teacher.
The list goes on and on, but still I wonder…
Who are the teachers that I have not yet noticed? That I am not yet tuning into?
How can I continue to expand the aperture of my curiosity?
How can I listen more deeply?
How can I open up to new teachers?
How can you?
LINK ABOUT IT
Kathleen Hanna on life as a 'Rebel Girl,' and the joy of expressing anger in public. I thoroughly enjoyed this interview with Kathleen Hanna, the frontwoman of the classic riot grrrl band Bikini Kill as well as Le Tigre — an inspirational story of persisting on your creative path against many odds. (I also learned that she was one who came up with the title for Nirvana’s biggest hit of all time: “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”)
How perfectly can reality simulated? A fascinating piece on how powerful video game engines are becoming, and how soon they may be able to create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality: “Last year, at the annual Game Developers Conference, in San Francisco, Epic gave a presentation on new updates to Unreal Engine… Executives showed off the engine’s new capabilities—including near-photorealistic foliage and updated fluid simulations—using an interactive scene of an electric truck off-roading through a verdant forest. Birds chirped as the vehicle rumbled through a ravine, its engine emitting a thin whine. The tires bounced in accordance with the truck’s suspension system. Leaves, brushed away, snapped back. Rocks were shunted to the side. People clapped at waving foliage. As the truck navigated through a puddle, water gushed over the tires. The man sitting next to me gasped.”
Nurturing capacious hearts. A moving interview with children’s book author Kate DiCamillo about the power of maintaining our sense of wonder and the importance of telling kids the truth: “That’s what I loved about going into classrooms and talking to kids… it was a chance to let the kid know that I saw them, and I saw them as an individual, as a human being… It goes back to that eight-year-old that’s right at the surface for me. I just remember what it was like to feel invisible, to feel … that you had to protect the adults by pretending that you believed the lies that they were telling you.”
Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize, on her writing process. Munro was one of my favorite writers in the world, and she passed away on May 13th. Read her obituary here, and get a glimpse inside her (very approachable and inspiring) creative process in this Paris Review interview: “I could be writing away one day and think I’ve done very well; I’ve done more pages than I usually do. Then I get up the next morning and realize I don’t want to work on it anymore. When I have a terrible reluctance to go near it, when I would have to push myself to continue, I generally know that something is badly wrong. Often, in about three quarters of what I do, I reach a point somewhere, fairly early on, when I think I’m going to abandon this story.”
A fascinating and hilarious episode of the Hard Fork podcast that explores new developments in AI companionship — where one of the hosts live interviews an “AI friend” named Turing.
“AI does everything badly and confidently. And I want to be it. I want to be that confident, that unembarrassed, that ridiculously sure of myself.”
A pivotal moment in our understanding of animal consciousness.
Salman Rushdie on his new memoir and the shadow self.
Jill Price has remembered every day of her life since she was 14.
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SHOUT-OUTS:
The beautiful artwork is from: Poulina Bogatskaya, who is based in Kazakhstan.
Link ideas from: Andrew Glei, Jessica Bozek, The Audacity, and Kottke.
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