The Invitation

By Oriah Mountain Dreamer 

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living

I want to know what you ache for

And if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,

for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow

If you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have been shriveled and closed

From fear of further pain

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,

without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,

If you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It does not interest me if the story you are telling me is true

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself,

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul,

if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty, every day,

and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,

And still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon ‘Yes!’.

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have,

I want to know if you can get up, after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone

And do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here

I want to know if you stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied

I want to know what sustains you, from the inside when all else falls away

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself

And if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

As hatred rules, a prayer for our country...check out this link...

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=M5OVMrad5iQ

   -- Rajendra Sharma 

The definition of illiteracy has changed in the 21^st Century. The person who is educated, through the education system as we know, can we call him a literate? Has he developed an ability to learn – unlearn – and relearn as a continuous process, to meet the new challenges of life to qualify as a literate. Otherwise the grownups are nothing more than educated illiterates.        

Actually, we have never given time to ask some basic questions. What education means? What is the purpose of Education? Why do we go through the struggle to be educated? Is it merely to pass an examination and get a job? Is the role of education so superficial or we have narrowed it down. 

We are in no way condemning or looking down on our role to earn one’s livelihood. Having a job and looking after our family is necessary, but is that all?        

Are we being educated only for this purpose? Surely life is not merely a job, an occupation. It is something extraordinarily wide, multidimensional, and profound. A vast realm in which we function as human beings. If we merely prepare ourselves to earn a livelihood, we shall miss the whole point of life. To understand life is much more important than merely prepare for exams and become proficient in mathematics, physics or what you will. Hence the function of Education is to prepare us to understand life in its totality and not in fragments.  

Having forgotten the true function of Education, it gets narrowed down to making you an efficient part in the huge machine of Society. Slowly life itself becomes mechanical, a boring 9 to 5 affair. Till you function efficiently and are contributing economically in the family, there is respect and a sense of worth. Everything gets reduced to usefulness. That is why as you retire, the respect around you starts eroding slowly, the sense of worthlessness creeps in. Ripe old age which was supposed to be golden gets corrupted by the feeling of insufficiency.        

Every body functioning for his own self  creates a  society  which breeds violence, corruption, hatred, rat race for success, pollution and much more.  The child is educated to somehow fit into this kind of society. Then the blame game starts, as to who is responsible for this mess. The politician becomes a very easy target, as the main culprit of all the ills of the society. But it is not so. The politician has also risen from the same society. The role of education has to change.        

We have to widen the scope of education to help us understand the whole process of life with all its subtleties, with all its beauty, its sorrow and joy,  and not just prepare us for a vocation. What is the use of degrees, and a comfortable luxuries life, if it makes your mind dull, weary and stupid.  Education should develop intelligence – which can be used to solve problems and meet new challenges of life. Right now Education only cultivates memory, and stuffs it with facts, information and figures.         

The Intelligence as we know, is the intelligence of limited knowledge and experience. Limited Intelligence within the confinements of the self as we know ourselves, doesn’t lead to life of harmony. Education shows the way of Self Discovery, which reveals the working of true intelligence.        

True Education should help us to explore the hidden talent, potential of the child. Once the hidden potential is discovered, nurtured and expressed then life is no more a struggle.         

Our parents and Society wants us to live safely and we also want it. But living a life of safety is a dull life with the hidden fear, that the walls of safety that we have built around ourselves can be broken down anytime. Is this the world we are educating our child to fit into? We are encouraging the child to fit into the framework of this disastrous society, as our parents encouraged us. In return, the society gives us respect, honor but they are empty.         

The purpose of Education is to free an individual from the patterns, that are built up by the society. 

A poet once said: