ELT Pros Linkedin | Videos | Blog | Printables | ELT News | TpTs | Youtube
My wife has been away for a few months now - she’s looking after her ill father in Korea. One constant question friends ask is “What are you doing for food?”.
Disregarding the obvious embedded sexist element, this question suggests that I don’t really know how to cook, fend for myself, food-wise. But my friends are surprised when I invite them over and they enjoy some great dishes made by yours truly. Like last week’s beef shank stew.
I’m so thankful to be able to cook and cook well. It is something we all should be able to do. Something we all in our lives must master. It makes one “more” … I’ll let you define what that means but it does.
What other things are essential for us to learn, besides the obvious?
What things should one do during one’s life to be “more”, a true soul in this world?
Well here are a few thoughts - please comment and add your own.
Essential learnings
Typing. Keyboard skills. It’s something we need in this day and age.
Cleaning. Washing clothes. Your mess - your responsibility to know how to clean it up.
Hammer a nail. Not so hard but you’d be surprised how many people don’t know how to hammer a nail or swing an axe to split wood.
Change a tire. Boost your car. Your car, your life on the road. Why don’t driver’s exams include this?
Build or create something. Start from scratch and make it. A dog house, a big house, a bench, a work of art, assemble a bike, write a story.
Bake bread. Cook rice. Staple food preparation. It’s your hunger, learn how to satisfy it.
Plant a seed. Grow things. Food comes from somewhere. You should learn to understand that basic fact.
Learn to sew. Clothes are a necessity - so should being able to repair them or even make them. Sewing - why don’t we learn this in school?
Forgive Yourself. It is essential to be able to do this completely. Part of the process of healing and becoming compassionate to life.
Optional but a true bucket list
(things you should do once in your life to be “more”.)
Kill something. Kill it, learn to gut it, prepare it then eat it.
Dig a grave. Bury something you love. See it slap into the hole. Fill that hole up.
Beg. Have nothing. Need to ask others for help. Feel the rawness of life.
Be lost and alone in the wild. Realize how little and vulnerable you always are.
Experience Birth. Women understand this. But if not married, see the birth of an animal, a goat, a cow, puppies - see them come out, take a breath, become “here”. Touch the placenta, taste the vernix caseosa.
Let go. Jump off a cliff. Bungee jump. Parachute. Walk naked outside in the rain. Totally let go for one time in your life.
Ask someone for forgiveness. You’d be surprised how many of us have never done this! Upfront, confront and ask.
Experience true fear. Caught in a house fire, a gun in your face, meeting a bear on a backroad. Doesn’t matter how, you need this jolt once in a lifetime to be “more”.
Get high. Don’t matter how you do it. Just lose yourself and open the doors of perception.
Win. Get a medal. Be awarded a trophy. It is an experience I didn’t understand so many had never experienced in their life until I started a program called Medals For Millions back in my athletic, kids foundation days. Everyone should feel that pride that comes through outside, formal recognition.