Why we’re always learning

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

The author of this saying is lost to the mists of time, although it’s routinely attributed to The Buddha, the Chinese text The Confucian Analects, The Theosophics, or even Tao Te Ching (in a longer form): “when the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready, the teacher will disappear.”

Here’s a contemporary riff on it by a Tibetan teacher: “You don’t need to go looking for the teacher. As soon as you’re ready, the teacher will look for you.” No matter its source, it’s still useful and relevant. I was reminded of it on a damp spring morning this week.

Charlotte to client: “You can’t do everything at once. There are only so many slices in a cake.”

Client: “New week, new cake.”

Charlotte: I make a quizzical look, then remember we’re on the phone, “Oh?”

Client: “There’s more cake next week.”

Charlotte: “Oh, you mean you can start again next week? There’s more time?”

Client: “No, just there’s more cake.”

I learn something new. Freud once said “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Life is sometimes simpler than I make it out to be. There isn’t always deep meaning lurking under the carpet or hiding in the cupboard…