I recently finished “Think on These Things” by Jiddu Krishnamurti. He talks a lot about solving our life’s problems, finding our right livelihood, finding energy for everything that we need to do in life – by becoming very attuned to what we love to do. In fact, the whole purpose of education is to find what you love and cultivate that.
But Krish and I have some disagreements on what it takes to reach a state of fluidly doing what you love.
He thinks that if you are free from fear, your mind is in the present and full of curiosity, sensitive and attentive, with a little trial and error, you will be able to easily find what you love to do. And then you will automatically have energy to do it, like a person who wants to play a game, so there will be no need for discipline.
Later, he elaborates that this energy works best in pursuit of truth: “As a river creates the banks which hold it, so the energy which seeks truth creates its own discipline without any form of imposition…”
On one hand, I could totally see how destructive, fear-based discipline could make it harder for a person to find the safety and flow to discover what they love. And I could see how someone who is in tune with what they love finds energy for it, is energized by it.
But I’m also a parent, and I’ve seen firsthand how unlikely it is that humans will do anything that is good for them without some kind of structure —- aka discipline.
How to Human
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find meaning in everyday life.
How do I become a better person through the shit that is mine to shovel? And what ultimately is a worthwhile aim? What focus makes me a better person and life a better place in the process?
I appreciate Krishnamurti for this, because we agree – the answer is ultimately love.
On the other hand, I also homeschool my kids. And every day I grapple with this question of how do we balance the need for discipline and structure against the need to cultivate enthusiasm and love for what we do?
I don’t feel like standard schooling does a good job of teaching us how to human. It doesn’t set us up to know how to live a good life. It doesn’t teach us how to do what are ultimately the most important things in life — like understand ourselves or the world, have relationships, find purpose or meaning or love in our actions, discipline ourselves to do hard things, or cultivate our creativity.
It teaches us to get a job.
Parenting is fun because you get to ask a lot of really deep questions about why we do things, and what is the point, and what do we actually need to live a good human life — and then apply it to real people who are going to argue with you the whole time.
What Does It Take to Discover What A Good Life Requires?
So when it comes to something like homeschooling (or life in general) – we have to make long-term choices about what each unique person needs to live a good life.
Society tells us that we need to know reading, writing, and arithmetic, maybe some history and science. We need to know how to follow rules and fulfill orders and show up on time so that we can be good workers.
Obviously, this is not enough.
We have assumed, on some level, that because kids go home, their parents will be there to teach them how to understand themselves, how to cook for themselves, how to pay bills and budget, how to have healthy relationships, how to be alone with themselves, and how to cultivate purpose and meaning. But in general, we’ve done a sh*tty job of all of these things.
And capacity matters.
In practice, these values are vying for the same time slot. You’re dealing with someone with limited time, very limited interest, and limited capacity to learn these things. And you have limited energy to convince them to cooperate.
Less is often more here.
I think Krishnamurti is right in that we need to cultivate the things that we love. Developing a sense of what matters most to us, what gets us into flow, what helps us feel purposeful, is an ideal way to go into adulthood.
And likewise, we don’t know what that is.
And even more so, it often requires failure. It requires doing the opposite, and doing it in public, and getting social feedback, in order for us to begin to develop a sense of what feels right to us. It requires doing scary things and enduring discomfort.
Discipline: Innate or Imposed?
Krishnamurti argues that if you really love something and you want to do it, you will spontaneously have the internal discipline to make this happen.
I think there are cases where this is true. And I also think, having tried to raise real children, that there’s no f**king way that’s gonna work.
We will almost always choose the easier path. Most people will choose the dopamine hit over the long, slow work that brings real progress.
It’s even harder in our dopamine-laden society today. We have to limit our access to dopamine-generating tasks so that we can develop interests. That doesn’t mean no screen time, but it means that we have to intentionally avoid it for certain parts of our day, in order to give our brains space to learn to deal with boredom by creating something — otherwise we won’t create.
The biggest game changer in homeschool for us was banning video games until 5 PM. But it takes a long time of sitting around on the couch moaning before something like wonder starts to spawn in there.
The adult version might look like banning social media and apps until evening, or hiding your phone.
This means discipline is not a punishment, but a container. It creates the space for the love you haven’t found yet.
A bit like Kara Mace’s observation that discipline works best as a support structure rather than a cage:
How Do We Cultivate Love?
But how do you cultivate love or enthusiasm in someone else (much less ourselves)?
When I’ve tried project-based learning before — where we take some high-interest subject, like people surviving volcanoes, and we read an intense, exciting book about someone surviving volcanoes, and everyone is excited, and it’s all really interesting — we try to transfer that to a slightly more wordy, less exciting book about surviving volcanoes, and they’re already losing interest.
I get out a book on the science of how volcanoes function — snap, interest is dead. If I put on a video about volcanoes, it’ll be dead by the end of the documentary.
Force-feeding interests too much too soon, in other words, kills them.
On the other hand, I told a kid that he had to write every day over the summer. Anything he wanted to write — it could be “poop,” 400 times, as long as he wrote.
And he decided to write an entire novel on zombies in the 1800s, which he is now editing and planning to publish.
Which I think maybe is very instructive for the adult project of building creative work.
Because we don’t necessarily know where we’re going. We don’t know which fires to feed and which ones will fizzle. And having someone force-feed you something is a sure way to kill your joy.
But if you create a container for it — something that you have to do, you have to show up for, but you can do anything — maybe those are the ingredients for creating a safe space to do something that you love long enough to build a lasting fire.
Sometimes Krish is right – the river carves its own banks. But sometimes you’ve got to dig a channel while you wait for water.
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