The WordPress/JetPack writing prompt for today is:
What’s a personal mantra or philosophy you live by?
When I taught Life Skills in a secondary school in Namibia, the teachers had a lot of freedom to do what they wanted. There was no set curriculum, there were no exams, the course was not a ‘promotion’ course in that it had no effect on one’s transcripts. there was literally no way to fail the course, and no way to pass it.
One of the activities that I decided to do with my students was a “rules to live by” exercise. This started by playing them Baz Luhrmann’s recitation of “Always Wear Sunscreen.” I followed this up by presenting a poster of my own page of “Rules to Live By.”
In the center, in big letters, I wrote DON’T PANIC. Then around it I wrote any number of guiding principles, from the profound “You don’t have to like everyone, but you have to treat them fairly” to the mundane “Don’t forget to eat vegetables.”
I’ve recycled that lesson in a number of other places that I’ve taught.
I do have a pdf of my poster somewhere, if I find it, I’ll add a screen cap to this post.
So what’s my personal mantra? it’s not a simple sentence, it’s a code with a lot of conditions on it: Be as nice as you can; Don’t hurt others; Look for the truth, which is often much more complex than the first answer you find…
In fact in one of the books that I’m writing, the first Deacon Carver Chronicle, two of the characters, Deacon and Rikaine, argue over personal philosophy. Rikaine holds that rules must be rigid to be fair, Deacon holds that rigid rules cause inequality and that you need to apply personal judgement to each situation.
You can read the scene here online for free if you’re interested.