Tabula rasa. I recall learning about this very term by philosopher, John Locke, to suggest we are each born with essentially a blank slate. That, from the time of birth, through our five senses, we combine experiences to make sense of the world.
I have since looked at all my five children and the countless amount of students that have crossed my way. I can say with pure conviction no child is alike and no siblings, no matter how much or how little provisions, restrictions, and constraints you equally give, will arrive to the same exact results.
Why is this so?
I want to say I understood John Locke way in the beginning of having studied his philosophy. In pointing out how we use our senses and thus, cultivate our perspectives within each growing makeshift of our walks in life, our meanings, our desires to arrive at destinies- we get there by choices within our journeys of chance, belief, and opportunity.
Our walks, turns, and well, returns, and well, spin-a-rounds, and well, “stuckness”, are each of our individual moves.
Our gifted talents of focus, drive, heart, and determination have been prepackaged. Were they not? Is it not the strength and how we thus, develop, each component that creates the outcome?
Our makeup should not be confused with our makeshift.
Two people can be given the same experience. One will rise and may even keep rising to greater or greatest heights. The other may fall and cower to never get up again.
Do we all arrive to our greatest potential? I continue to hope. If not, what stops us? Our makeup or our makeshift? Is it not what stands before us and not what was already given to us?
Were we not gifted our very unique self at birth before we interacted with the world? Do we think the world makes us based upon what the world has had to offer us? Or, do some of us just wrongly sense who we are uniquely meant to be and thus, search and search eternally or follow others’ footsteps who we think we should be?
I do not suppose Locke lacked understanding that each of us hereditarily were born unique due to our genetic components. Clearly, one with blue eyes in contrary to one with brown eyes proves each of our starting points already proposed differences.
Would Locke suggest, however, blue eyes shall be promised greater wisdom than those with brown eyes or vice versa?
Would Locke predict golden brown hair are inherently to have journeys to be coveted than those with onyx streaks?
Could there have been potentially a greater Michael Jordan or Tyler Phelps out there? Could there be in this world, within a city, province, or village another Cristiano Reynaldo or Usain Bolt? This is just to point out athletic talents. How about of all other talents out there?
Talents are in multitude. Each of us have a gifted talent. There stand with us writers, readers, story-tellers, mathematicians, scientists, problem-solvers, athletes, musicians, artists, motivators, inspirational leaders, innovators, thinkers, doers, movers, shakers, etc.
Could it just be, however, some of us have failed to fully sense what gifts we truly possess?
How is it we know of such names like James, Mayweather, Pacquiao, Gates, Musk, Bezos, Arnault, Buffet, Ma, Bocelli, Michaelangelo, DaVinci, Newton, Einstein, King, Ali, Tyson, and even, X?
What made them different?
Those were but a few men of whom someone out there has looked upon for inspiration or with awe.
We were not made to hoard our gifts to ourselves and hide away. How else can magnificence of a symphony become euphonic to the ears without producers, directors, composers, musicians, conductors, technicians to come together to give you splendor? Add acting and singing to that and costume design, makeup and hair artists, to multiple crew members of each set or scene must come into full action. Those, to have named a few.
Each gifted talent sensed to fruition.
How does one get to open up their gift for all to see if it is hidden or never found? If and once found, how does one care for such present? Once cared for, even more, how does one set forth and set right such gift so that it is not destroyed, but heard, seen, smelled, tasted, or felt by the senses of others needing to be inspired or awed?
Is it better to have never received, found, or discovered such gift than to have been given or gifted the present only to work to let go, lose, or destroy it tomorrow?
How do we cultivate our talents, our gifts, so that they are not wasted?
Should our unique makeup be the main ingredients, then, should this not propose our five senses are seasonings to completion of the makeshift of our makeup?
I can assure you my spaghetti tastes different from yours. However, we all started with pasta.
Results are the output of our input.
Students now have pencils and paper provided for them if needed. Although I don’t ever recall having such splendor given to me at such an open comfort and ease, if you don’t provide a child a pencil, what excuse is that to not be able to write and thus, learn like the rest, I tell myself?
Do all with pencils and paper, regardless of how it arrived to each child, result in academic excellence? Answer that one.
Still, everything needed is given.
How much more academic success I would have had if such were abundance to me, I cannot speculate. I simply partake in the effort to give a child no excuse to get started on the right path.
Sometimes, we do not stop at just pencils and paper.
Clothes and shoes were what I was handed down to wear. Now, it seems that there is no telling who truly is suffering from financial struggles.
Lost and Found bins, not just in my school, but throughout schools I have come across are filled with unclaimed coats, pricey water containers, shoes, and at times, even bags and backpacks.
Interesting how I never even knew of a Lost and Found bin at schools or that one was so obvious, overflowing with unclaimed items. If ever there was to be such a bin, I laughingly admit I would have never known because I didn’t have any items to lose. I wore what I had.
I joke with others that “It is because parents pay for what’s lost our students care not if they are to ever be again found”. I can say this with much humbled laughter only because I have not only experienced and endured this as a parent, but have truthfully exhibited the contribution to having such occurrence happen.
Whether gifted and thus, passed down, or personally bought, does not the child who receives still possess something without having earned?
These days I think, Whatever are in those bins truly had no value for whomever they belonged to. Otherwise, all briefly lost would be quickly reclaimed.
I remember being so excited for Black Friday to arrive where following Thanksgiving (back in the times where you woke up early the day after Thanksgiving to be one of the first inside a department store to get limited items offered during the Early Bird specials), I would be able to finally get these two winter coats for my daughters. They were both, to me, beautiful wool coats, coats I perhaps wanted each to have knowing at their age it would have been what I would have desired for myself.
Although my daughters had a thing or two to suggest my style was not theirs, these were coats I was sure they would appreciate.
One of the coats didn’t last one day once back at school. The story was- a friend borrowed it, put it down, and then, in the midst of whatever confusion, the coat could no longer be found.
I had this preference that my daughters have the same things to subliminally suggest equality. When one lost theirs, I felt an imbalance of possession between my two daughters. From the moment one of the coats was surely lost, whenever the other one wore theirs, I was reminded of the other not having the same.
Although the mother in me expressed sheer disappointment for the lack of care, the continuing mother in me was bothered of the imbalance between my two daughters.
My stance on teaching my daughter to take better responsibility waned and thus, weakened. One having less upon my power of control did not do too well for my conscience.
I was angry, irritated, but most of all, disappointed. What did I do, however? This time, just this time, I went and bought another one.
My need to see and feel balance again led my utter decision to not only forgive the misfortune of “losing” the coat, but replace it almost immediately to move forward as if no loss had even taken place. Ultimately, the imbalance hurt me more than my daughters could probably ever care to admit minutely even bothering them.
As truth hurts at times, I must handle the matter of fact that I was more excited to get those coats for them than they were in receiving. They most likely have forgotten that incident to have even taken place.
Funny. What gifts do we possess we fail to even acknowledge or give care to?
Does our makeshift make us or makeup? Or, are there just some of us made up to shift toward what we want to make of ourself?
I may well indeed have not gotten the perfect parent point for buying my daughter another coat after she had lost the first one. She may well have heard a word or two from me. She may well have seen that losing something was or was not a big deal. She may have well smelled the stench from wrongdoing. She may well have tasted the unfairness of being a victim. She may well have felt regret of having lost a gift. She may well have sensed all that or little if nothing at all.
Do we all react the same when we lose something we have been gifted or given?
Children waste in abundance pencils and paper given to them at no cost. I say to myself then, have I not been preaching, “Give yourself no excuse, but to succeed.” to my children and students?
Even grown and merited as an adult, if we should judge and have a thing or two to say, are we free from suggesting we have never wasted our given gifts?
Really?
What is one given to be great? Are we not told everything? If one should argue or object, is everything to reach your greatest potential the same for all?
No. I should have not gotten my daughter another coat. She would not have cared to have gotten another one. However, I was able to. My heart told me to. My love forgave and thus, restored.
Pencils and paper she had in plenty. That’s a good start for any. A coat to add? To suggest further that surely she will continue to be at best.
At best at what or for what? I’m no captain of that ship, automobile, train, plane or even leader of that journey.
John Locke may well point out that the blank slate still must start with well, a slate- a fine, grained rock.
No rock starts exactly as the same.
