Some years ago, aspiring school teachers who studied the approach to effective instruction were told to: "Diagnose, remediate, monitor and adjust". Those terms assume a dispassionate, objective view of others who are trying to learn. For example, not included in the list are: "yell, freak-out, sulk, or fret". Yet, if one were to observe any given classroom long enough, they might easily see some of these work their way into the mix. Why? It's human. Even the best teachers are still human, although we expect them to "rise above" that baseline label.
Why don't we have the same high expectations for ourselves: "to rise above" our selves? In other settings, far from the noble aims of school, we see all manner of petty, reactive behaviors that make the rest of us "tsk, tsk" our disapproval (as we privately and habitually seat ourselves on the judgment throne).
'A dispassionate, objective view' is easy to apply in the abstract, but most of us humans basically are petty and reactive (perhaps especially when exhausted, which is what teachers often become toward the end of the school day). For too many others, there's little better to expect at any time. Too often, the ups and downs of daily life are taken personally and are felt to affect core issues of survival, when nothing even close to that is the case. We can survive the loss of a parking space to a car that cut us off, and yet up goes the middle finger, along with an urge to vote the other driver off the planet. At the moment of reaction, smiling at the other driver makes just as much sense; it would be more unsettling to the other and more calming for us, (although not if it's done as a weapon substitute for the middle finger!)
Toward bringing objectivity more consistently into daily life, a few exercises might be tried. One is to imagine (remember) thoughts of an airline passenger looking down on the little cars scurrying around on the streets like a colony of confused ants. For those in the cars, making it into the next intersection before the yellow light seems crucial. Not so much from 30,000 feet. The drivers are intent on their list of important errands, the overhead observer sees only bustling nonsense. From a higher perspective, most of what we do doesn't matter all that much.
Another exercise is to take a usual habit of looking in the mirror and expand the experience, to the infinite. Place another mirror behind you and just off to the side, so that your reflection is reflected, ad infinitum. This demonstrates how a rather shallow, everyday experience (checking for one's own surface imperfections) can be rendered quite insignificant by considering one's place in an infinite context. One's self image after several iterative reflections is small and recedes further until it's indistinguishable.
One last exercise is to take a walk through a cemetery now and then. The stones mark the resting places of hundreds of people who thought they were each the center of the universe. (But if that proves to be the case, it would seem the surest way to that end is by becoming part of the dirt.) One can only hope that the denial of their mortality didn't rob them of too many of life's joys.
The point of objectivity in daily life is humility. No one has truly mastered even the simplest of tasks. Even conscious breathing is most often overlooked and the value of one, deep, conscious breath is amazing. Reflexively, you're probably trying it now.
We're all just fumbling along through life and we might as well stay humble while we're at it. When we're at our best, we try to operate with successive approximations, or as the instruction goes: diagnose, remediate, monitor and adjust. We have a life practice going on with a goal of improvement. Mistakes and tough breaks are for learning and growth, not reacting to out of base urges or personal feelings.
Humility has a common Latin origin with "earth", i.e. the ground (humus). Normally, when we say one was 'treated like dirt', we pity him and despise the other's misbehavior. Soil is far more noble than a human who would lord it over others. Such arrogance will eventually crumble and erode, although usually not soon enough for the rest of us who don't mind working with a little dirt under our fingernails, at the practice of life.
Why don't we have the same high expectations for ourselves: "to rise above" our selves? In other settings, far from the noble aims of school, we see all manner of petty, reactive behaviors that make the rest of us "tsk, tsk" our disapproval (as we privately and habitually seat ourselves on the judgment throne).
'A dispassionate, objective view' is easy to apply in the abstract, but most of us humans basically are petty and reactive (perhaps especially when exhausted, which is what teachers often become toward the end of the school day). For too many others, there's little better to expect at any time. Too often, the ups and downs of daily life are taken personally and are felt to affect core issues of survival, when nothing even close to that is the case. We can survive the loss of a parking space to a car that cut us off, and yet up goes the middle finger, along with an urge to vote the other driver off the planet. At the moment of reaction, smiling at the other driver makes just as much sense; it would be more unsettling to the other and more calming for us, (although not if it's done as a weapon substitute for the middle finger!)
Toward bringing objectivity more consistently into daily life, a few exercises might be tried. One is to imagine (remember) thoughts of an airline passenger looking down on the little cars scurrying around on the streets like a colony of confused ants. For those in the cars, making it into the next intersection before the yellow light seems crucial. Not so much from 30,000 feet. The drivers are intent on their list of important errands, the overhead observer sees only bustling nonsense. From a higher perspective, most of what we do doesn't matter all that much.
Another exercise is to take a usual habit of looking in the mirror and expand the experience, to the infinite. Place another mirror behind you and just off to the side, so that your reflection is reflected, ad infinitum. This demonstrates how a rather shallow, everyday experience (checking for one's own surface imperfections) can be rendered quite insignificant by considering one's place in an infinite context. One's self image after several iterative reflections is small and recedes further until it's indistinguishable.
One last exercise is to take a walk through a cemetery now and then. The stones mark the resting places of hundreds of people who thought they were each the center of the universe. (But if that proves to be the case, it would seem the surest way to that end is by becoming part of the dirt.) One can only hope that the denial of their mortality didn't rob them of too many of life's joys.
The point of objectivity in daily life is humility. No one has truly mastered even the simplest of tasks. Even conscious breathing is most often overlooked and the value of one, deep, conscious breath is amazing. Reflexively, you're probably trying it now.
We're all just fumbling along through life and we might as well stay humble while we're at it. When we're at our best, we try to operate with successive approximations, or as the instruction goes: diagnose, remediate, monitor and adjust. We have a life practice going on with a goal of improvement. Mistakes and tough breaks are for learning and growth, not reacting to out of base urges or personal feelings.
Humility has a common Latin origin with "earth", i.e. the ground (humus). Normally, when we say one was 'treated like dirt', we pity him and despise the other's misbehavior. Soil is far more noble than a human who would lord it over others. Such arrogance will eventually crumble and erode, although usually not soon enough for the rest of us who don't mind working with a little dirt under our fingernails, at the practice of life.
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