Closed Minds

~ Closed Minds ~

Dear Friends on our Journey ~ ~ ~

I used to think I knew so much. I remember going into college and even long after I got there thinking I knew at least as much as my professors. The disease talking. Stinking Thinking!! When I had four children and started parenting, I just knew there was no more to learn and I spent my days "instructing" them on what life was all about. HA! The disease talking again!

I've been a teacher all my life. And there were two times that it became crystal clear to me that I didn't know very much at all. The first time was when I first began teaching. After several years of this ... maybe even less .... I began to realize that I was learning far more from my students than I was teaching them. And the second time the light dawneth was three years ago when I began my OA journey to recovery. I realized I knew practically "nothing about nothing."

"It is impossible to begin to learn
that which one thinks
one already knows."

Epictetus

We who think or thought we knew everything have a big problem. If we think we already know things, and someone who *really* DOES know what they're talking about begins writing or speaking, our mind closes tightly and we don't learn from them. I have become more open minded in program .... and I listen to the smallest voices ... the softest voices ... the youngest voices .... and I learn so much.

I listen to my children, now grown, and see some characteristics I had at that age and think to myself. "You just wait until you get to be my age .... you'll see just how much you've got to learn." And then that same child will amaze me with just how much he/she knows already. And how much they are able to teach me.

When we put aside what we know ... and listen fresh as though we know nothing .... we suddenly see what we miss by closing our mind.

Dear God,
Keep my mind
open. It needs to
keep learning ... and
how can it do that .. if I
know everything and keep
it closed.

Love,
Mari
Marisok@aol.com
The Recovery Group