eisba

Learning is Life Long.

History illustrates that where education falls behind the pace of technological change, workers become idle.

Once education catches up, prosperity follows.

The problem is that the life long learning necessary to keep up (or ideally out pace) technology favours those who are either young or already educated. It also tends to favour those who have general rather than specific skills.

Although there is a current reaction against globalisation and migration, which tends to exacerbate the woes of the middle aged specialist worker, it is unlikely to be halted. The world is simply smaller now and will become even more integrated, eventually.

Change will happen and it may be difficult. The career/job for life no longer exists. And more and more people are becoming self-employed, either as specialist or generalists through the so called ‘gig’ economy.

These workers are de facto taking responsibility for themselves and will need to know how to and what to develop competences in. This is even more important for them now, given that working lives are getting longer and time to market for technological innovations shorter.

The ‘Seven Ages of Man’ may need revision. Those of us moving from six to seven may need to put our grumpiness on hold and adapt. Those in five or six may need to learn responsive learning patterns.

Those new ways will include developing resilience to change and the emotional intelligence to keep being flexible, learning and risking try new ways to contribute. I have no doubt we will want to do so with organisations that take us empathetically in mind.

We need a real, inclusive Community College for Careers and Commerce for ‘5th ages giggers and beyond!’

The modern world would have you pop a ‘pill and flop back to work’. It’s almost like there is no time to pause and recover. The government stats bare this out; sickness per employee is dropping still. It is below four days a year. Hurrah for productivity! Hurrah for progress! But are we really getting better?

The government stats also bemoan the number of people who present at over worked A&E with flu like symptoms’, because they simply don’t know how to be ‘ill at ease’, that is how to stay at home and recover properly.

Of course, if necessary we, patients, should seek right medical support for urgent or critical illnesses, but there is also a case for being ‘patient at home’ with ourselves, by arming ourselves with proper rest rather than harming ourselves with over work (which also includes over working the emotional berating we can put ourselves through for not being ‘better enough’. There is a sense of social exclusion driven by being perceived as ‘feeble’ or a ‘shirker’.

Many of the pharmaceutical peddle this view throughly highly advertised ‘miracle cures’ and have us believing we should bounce back instantaneously. Before they existed, like back in my 1960’s childhood all the kids with mumps and measles would meet up and play together. We would keep ourselves isolated in community!

But today, kids, even big kids like you and me, are wheeled down the doctors for antibiotics for a sore throat. Why? Because our busy, important world demands it!

Instead, honey & lemon, gargling with salt water, warm rest and fluids will suffice, best done of course, quietly without grumbling or bowing down to demands to be perfectly fit!

In essence we just have to be a bit kinder to ourselves and others. To encourage us all to take better care of ourselves. Let’s not threaten each other with terrible things that might happen if they don’t get better, quick!

Ideally, they should rest at home, sparing the rest of us, too! Maybe, if you make just one resolution this year, forget wearing yourself out at the gym and, instead, make life a little easier by embracing the art of being ‘ill at ease’.
‘There is one consolation about being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.’ Henry David Thoreau

A degree of IDLENESS is essential to an efficient and effective life. This is an oft forgotten insight in an age when mindfulness apps set targets for sitting still and for exercise, and of course for monitoring our hearts, bloods and other bits! God forbid that any of them should raise!

Rumi, Sufi story teller, speaks of a father who well loved his three sons and was wise as to the art of idleness. He wanted to know what his off spring knew of the power of ‘Doing Nothing’, so he asked the

The eldest explained his adept at ‘doing little’. It had made him patient. He explained how, for example, he could read another man’s mind by the sound of their voice and, if they refused to speak, he could watch him for three days and get to know them well. The old man smiled

Laziness had a different impact on the second son. It had made him crafty. He too could understand another by the sound of their voice and, if they refused to speak, the second son would start talking. The other was then bound to reply, and give them-self away. Not quite so impressive, thought the old man; craftiness is a common human trait. All you have to do is know the trick.

But idleness was best achieved by best the youngest who had the mastered gift of presence – of being, not doing, some might say.

And what comes with presence? The ability to be receptive and sit in front of another and feel what the other felt. With that sense, he could understand anyone. Some call this ‘mindsight’. A means to receive insights from a place not influenced by either joy nor grief. It is a way that mediates between voice and presence; where information and energy flow, and relationship is at its deepest.

For me, it is a place of ease. Of doing little, but affecting much. This laziness, Jesus told his followers makes a burden light. If it feels heavy, hard work, impossible then something has gone wrong. Ease is the key principal.

Buddhist teach of “right effort”, which invariably means less effort. When your legs are dead, your back is aching, and your mind feels caught up in a storm, it’s time to stop meditating. A mindless, joyful chat with a friend will be more spiritually beneficial.

Idleness allows things to unfold without a need to influence or be in need of an outcome. Stuff just happens when you contemplate it.