The Best Teacher
Honesty is the best teacher. Is that how it goes? No, it’s honesty is the best policy. What is that? A dictum? It has a nice Latin ring to it. And the word became flesh. I am who am, a watered-down Christian bleed-off from the Bhagavad Gita.
Dictum, homily, truism, adage–say something wrong and you get a glimpse into how you’ve been trained in what’s right. Say it right and the man with a pencil mustache and a top hat flips you a kipper and the spectators applaud. You’re a trained seal in a wash tub.
So what is the best teacher? Life? Start off on the wrong foot and it all comes unraveled. They don’t mean life, they mean getting stuck in society’s trenches and surviving the mortar rounds. Shell shocked with a purple heart, they play taps, doff their hats and cut your pension–another casualty of life’s lesson. Ah…black bird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly.
Behind every lesson lies a secret agenda. Every teacher is a pimp for someone else’s best interests. Each breath you draw from birth to death has a diminished return. Erase the boundary between you and the black bird. Take flight. Learn to fly…
