What We Process When Our Minds Are at Rest
A few months back, my daughter Sofie hit me with a metaphorical hard ball that can be reduced to this sentence:
“Dad, when I was young you modeled curiosity but didn’t leave me to ask and answer questions on my own.”
Oof.
Is it possible that in my exuberance to share the world with my kids, I didn’t leave them the space to fire up their own imaginations? This realization felt like a gut punch to what I believed was my greatest strength with teams, students, and, gulp, my children.
I carried this nagging thought with me on our vacation to Bali and Java over the last two months.
In the quiet of banana trees, Frangipani flower offerings, and rice fields, with a lizard slithering across the open patio, I’ve finally been able to process something worth sharing with others.
What helped me arrive at this point: Two shy Javanese middle schoolers asked if they could interview me on the street yesterday. One of their questions was, “What have you liked most about Indonesia?” Without hesitation, I said, “the people.” What I’m responding to is the joy and playfulness I’ve seen in so many of the faces here. This is a gift they have given me — a reminder that joy can be found in everyday moments, whether on a motorbike stuck in Ubud traffic, while gossiping or telling a joke, or just regarding a stranger on the street.
With this newfound appreciation for joyfulness, I explained my curiosity-killing transgression to a new friend in Bali.
He asked me a simple question:
“You know what educate means, right?” After answering with something like, “to illuminate things for others,” he said, “It means, to extract.”
Extract?
“Extract” stems from the Latin root of the word “educare,” which means to draw out or lead forth. The (duh, obvious) role of a teacher is not just to impart knowledge but to draw out the inherent potential and understanding that already exists within a student. Teaching is a leap of faith — an exercise in believing that your students (or offspring) will have the incentive to explore and discover knowledge on their own. In other words, you can lead your students or kids to water (facilitate discovery), but you can’t make them drink or, yikes, drink it for them.
Did I completely blow this with my daughter? Did I fail as a mentor on her hero’s journey and instead present her with an obstacle she has to surmount? I think the latter.
But wait…I had a control group…my son Zach! He got the same dad oversharing as my daughter, but he took it and ran with it. He was more, “I see what you did there and I raise you…” And as a result, in true improv form, he “yes, and’d” what I had to teach him and parlayed that into meaningful work of his own. (Dad plug: [www.zamchick.com](http://www.zamchick.com))
But back to Sofie. Sofie’s different from Zach and me. Where we plunder the land of ideas, Sofie plumbs the depths of emotional experience. She’s a songwriter, and she often asks me to weigh in on her lyrics. I can sum up my contribution with two words: humorous relief. Where I play with words, she finds emotional resonance. Then she performs her songs in a way that can transport an audience. (Dad plug: [www.sofiezamchick.com](http://www.sofiezamchick.com))
So while I sit here now in the far-away café pictured above, my takeaways are…
- Sometimes it takes distance and time to truly reflect on our actions and their impact
- - We can only teach what we know (at the time)
- - It’s important to balance guidance with autonomy
- - Model lifelong learning even if it means sharing your mistakes
- - Recognizing and adapting to learning styles is critical to mentoring
And lastly, and most importantly for me, it just may be that I’m yet another parent who has taught my kids “what not to do,” rather than what to do.
A cautionary note about the emerging knowledge landscape:
Just as I may have stifled my daughter’s curiosity by being too eager with answers, Generative AI has the potential to do the same. If we’re not careful, AI might lead us to become passive consumers of knowledge rather than active seekers of it. Growth happens when we wrestle with questions ourselves, allowing our imaginations to take the lead. And as seen in the faces of the young people in Bali and Java, it’s important to tap our innate playfulness and joy for our teaching and learning to be most effective.
