Karen GoatKeeper's Blog - Posts Tagged "thinking"
Aspirations
In school, especially elementary school, the question was what you wanted to be when you grew up. Girls were supposed to become housewives and mothers back then. How does a child learn to dare to be different?
It is so easy to follow the crowd. You don't have to think, just listen. Someone else will tell you what to think and what to believe and what to do.
Being different is hard. You can be lonely. You can make mistakes. Is it worth it?
Being a writer is being different. You have to look at things differently, see them differently. You have to take disparate pieces of information and put them together in new ways.
I was lucky. I had teachers who encouraged their students to imagine, to think, to read. Somewhere along the way it came together.
One student complained to me that the students didn't think like I did. That was why they had problems in my classes. I've seen some of these students since. They still let someone else do their thinking for them.
I pity them. They may never suffer from the mistakes resulting from their decisions. They will also never know the incredible high of seeing a dream come true, a dream born of imagination and thinking.
That is what makes aspirations worth all the problems.
It is so easy to follow the crowd. You don't have to think, just listen. Someone else will tell you what to think and what to believe and what to do.
Being different is hard. You can be lonely. You can make mistakes. Is it worth it?
Being a writer is being different. You have to look at things differently, see them differently. You have to take disparate pieces of information and put them together in new ways.
I was lucky. I had teachers who encouraged their students to imagine, to think, to read. Somewhere along the way it came together.
One student complained to me that the students didn't think like I did. That was why they had problems in my classes. I've seen some of these students since. They still let someone else do their thinking for them.
I pity them. They may never suffer from the mistakes resulting from their decisions. They will also never know the incredible high of seeing a dream come true, a dream born of imagination and thinking.
That is what makes aspirations worth all the problems.
