What would you teach?

White ground; blue sky; E asleep next to me; kids making breakfast and doing their own homeschooling. I love the way life runs itself. I love that it is not my job to direct it. For so long I tried, and it always ended in frustration. For so long I wanted things my way and lived a life of hard luck and hard knocks. For so long I thought I was responsible for so much, and whenever anything I felt I was responsible for didn’t go the way I thought it should, the stress built and the wrinkles grew.

Life is easier now. Living in a strange land; helping to raise a couple of kids; helping to get a house built; running a music venue is so much easier than almost anything I’ve ever done before. The less I know how it should run, the more I simply live what’s facing me now, the easier it gets.

If (as I have done) I start wondering how we’re going to finish off the house; how I can manage my debt; what’s going to happen to the kids; where is our relationship heading, then everything immediately gets difficult, seemingly impossible. Even if I try and figure out how my week is going to work, I have a very hard time. Yet if I simply remain present and do this now, there is never too much to do, it is impossible to be overwhelmed.

I love hearing people’s plans. I love that they predict to the nth degree how everything is going to happen. I love that it never does. To say, for instance, that I’m going to spend the rest of my life with E, is just asking for trouble. It is the beginning of a guilt relationship: I am staying with you because I said I would. It is impossible not to have an element of fear and hatred in such a relationship, especially if I expect the same from her. It is so much easier to love her when there is no obligation, and not only does that make it easier to be with her, it also makes it so much more likely that I’ll want to stay. Love is unconditional, after all.

There are so many hate relationships going on in this world because of guilt. I love the one where people stay together ‘for the kids.’ What are you teaching the kids in this relationship? You are teaching them to hate the ones they live with and make them feel guilty. You are always teaching, and what you teach is what you live. Is this what you would teach if you had a choice?

And, of course, the choice is yours. What would you teach?