Nerburn - Simple truths: clear & gentle guidance on the big issues in life

SIMPLE TRUTHS

Also by Kent Nerburn

Small Graces
Letters to My Son
Neither Wolf nor Dog
Calm Surrender
Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace
Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce

Edited by Kent Nerburn

The Wisdom of the Native Americans
The Soul of an Indian

SIMPLE TRUTHS

Clear & Gentle Guidance
on the Big Issues in Life

K ENT N ERBURN

NEW WORLD LIBRARY
NOVATO, CALIFORNIA

New World Library
14 Pamaron Way
Novato, California 94949

First printing of this edition, September 2005

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means
electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the
publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

1996 Kent Nerburn. Much of the material in this book is excerpted from
Letters to My Son, 1993 Kent Nerburn.

Text design and typography: Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nerburn, Kent, 1946
Simple truths : clear and gentle guidance
on the big issues in life / Kent Nerburn.
p. cm.
ISBN-10: 1-57731-515-4
ISBN-13: 978-1-57731-515-5
(cloth : alk. paper)
1. Conduct of life. 2. Spiritual life. 3. Success. I. Title.

BJ1581.2.N447 1996 96-5130
170.44dc20 CIP

ISBN-10: 1-57731-515-4
ISBN-13: 978-1-57731-515-5

A proud member of the Green Press Initiative

Printed in the United States Distributed by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In honored memory of my father, Lloyd Nerburn,
who lived a life of simple truths.

CONTENTS

Life is an endlessly creative experience,
and we are shaping ourselves at every moment
by every decision we make.

The world is full enough of grand moralizing and private visions. The last thing I ever intended was to risk adding my voice to the long list of those involved in such endeavors.

Then, in midlife, everything changed. I was surprised with the birth of a child. I saw before me a person who would have to make his way through the tangle of life by such lights as he could find. It was, and is, incumbent upon me to guide him.

As I look around, I am concerned. The world is full of contrary visions, viewpoints, and recriminations. Our brightest dreams and our greatest fears are just over the horizon. Clear and measured voices are hard to find.

If I can offer something of value, it is this: a vision of life that acknowledges our human condition while remaining hopeful about our human potential; a voice that speaks with compassion and empathy about the world in which we live; and a viewpoint that seeks a common ground from which to survey the vast and confusing landscape before us.

We live in a time when it is hard to speak from the heart. The poetry of our spirits is silenced by the thoughts and cares of a thousand trivialities. This small book is my attempt to speak from the heart about some of lifes biggest issues.

I offer it to you as both a father and a friend.

SIMPLE TRUTHS

ON EDUCATION
AND LEARNING

Education is one of the great joys and solaces of life. It gives us a framework for understanding the world around us and a way to reach across time and space to touch the thoughts and feelings of others.

But education is more than schooling. It is a cast of mind, a willingness to see the world with an endless sense of curiosity and wonder.

If you want to be truly educated, you must adopt this cast of mind. You must open yourself to the richness of your everyday experience to your own emotions, to the movements of the heavens and the languages of birds, to the privations and successes of

people in other lands and other times, to the artistry in the hands of the mechanic and the typist and the child. There is no limit to the learning that appears before us. It is enough to fill us each day a thousand times over.

The dilemma of how best to educate has always pivoted on the issue of freedom to explore versus the structured transmission of knowledge.

Some people believe that we learn best by wandering forth into an uncharted universe and making sense of the lessons that life provides.

Others believe that we learn best by being taught the most complete knowledge possible about a subject, then being sent forth to practice and use that knowledge.

Both ways have been tried with every possible method and in every possible combination and balance.

If we find ourselves tempted to celebrate one approach over the other, we should remember the caution of the Chinese sage Confucius, who told his followers, Study without thinking and you are blind; think without studying and you are in danger.

Formal schooling is one way of gaining education, and it should not be underestimated. School, if it is good, imparts knowledge and a context for understanding the world around us. It opens us to ideas that we could never discover on our own, and makes us one with the life of the mind as it has been shaped by people and cultures that we could never meet in our own experience. It makes us part of a community of learners, and helps us give form and direction to the endless flow of experience that passes before us.

It is also a great frustration, because it often seems irrelevant to the passions of our own interests and beliefs.

When you feel burdened by formal education, do not be quick to cast it aside. What is happening is a great surge in your growth and consciousness that is screaming out for immediate and total exploration.

You must remember that all other learners have traveled the same path. And though all true learners have felt this urge to strike out on their own, formal education, in its many shapes and guises, has been sought and revered by all people and all cultures at all times. It has a genius that is greater than your passions, and is abandoned at your own peril.