Excel your friends? Or let them excel you?

La Rochefoucauld, the French philosopher, said: “If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.”

That's a rather interesting piece of advice. One would think there would be more companionship in everyone doing well. Yet there are examples of this philosophy all over the place in life. Whenever people start make something of their life other people decide they don't like the change. They get jealous that their friends are finally starting to have the good life and start trying to drag them back to their old habits and ways of thinking, like the proverbial crabs in a bucket.

People often say they want the best for the people that they care about, but what most of them really mean is that they want those people to have the best possible experience they can have as long as it isn't better than what their own life currently is.

But isn't this kind of backwards? I mean shouldn't we be happy for the people that we care about doing well, regardless of whether or not they are doing better than we are? If not, why do we send our children to school?

The whole point is to instill in our children knowledge that has already been accumulated, so that they can use everything that has been learned up until this point as a springboard for their lives, to propel them further than we were able to go. They can learn from the experiences of others. They do not need to go through the same trial and error that got us to where are today. 

For generations, martial arts students have trained under their teachers until their teachers could teach them no more. And then the students, the ones that stick with it,  become the masters, teaching a whole new generation of students.

Think about it, if I train from age 20 to age 60, I have 40 years of knowledge that I can pass on to others. But during my training I figure out new and better ways to do what has already been done. When I become the master, I am able to teach what I have learned to others in half that time. Those that I teach do the same and with each successive generation there is more knowledge and due to newer better techniques it takes less time to absorb it all, making for more time to learn even newer even better ways.

In martial arts it is the purpose of the master for his students to one day exceed him. One man standing on another man's shoulders can reach places he might otherwise never have been able to go. Shouldn't it be this way in every area of life where there is an instructor and a student? Martial arts, college, philosophy, an office job, family, relationships why should it be different for any of these things?

How does it make you feel when someone that you have taught something exceeds your training and is able to use it to go further in their life and to train that new thing to others? Do you think you should hide or squash your natural talents so as not to make others feel bad?

Good teachers still have a lot to learn

Many people see teachers as pillars of light shining through the darkness of the uneducated masses. They are sometimes looked at as the superheroes that draw our children out of that darkness and mold them into knowledgeable young adults.

Teachers are certainly those things, but they are not infallible and they do not know everything. The best teachers are themselves good students. They can and do learn what parts of their teaching methods are working for some students and not others.

Good teachers are adaptable and flexible, not fixed in their ways. They take constructive feedback from parents and students and use that information to find new more effective ways of teaching.
There multiple different ways of teaching a given thing. For example, some people learn better by listening, some learn better by watching and some, most in fact, learn better by doing. Learning a thing by doing a thing is called experiential learning. Now if a teacher uses experiential learning as their primary method, they will have more successes with that method than by any other. However, if some of the students of that teacher learn better by memorizing details that they hear, those students will do poorly unless the teacher is aware of that and makes that part of his or her lessons as well.

Also a good teacher is willing to accept the possibility of being wrong from time to time. After all, we are all human(supposedly) and do sometimes make mistakes. I remember multiple times while growing up, finding errors in my text books or on tests. Some teachers stubbornly defended whatever it was the printed word said, no matter how stupid or ridiculous it was. And it made them look just as stupid and ridiculous. Others admitted right off when an error was made and made every effort to make others aware of it so that the correct information would be available in the future.

What you may not realize is that we are all teachers and students. Every person you know or will ever know can be both teacher and student to you. There are things that you can learn from everyone alive, rich and poor, noble and peasant, elder and younger. Every man woman and child on this planet is a vast storehouse of knowledge and experiences. And you can fill your cup with that knowledge just as you can fill their cups with what you know.

But are you a good student? Are you a good teacher? Are you fixed and rigid in your ways? Is what tradition you is right all that you are willing to accept? Are you willing to admit when you are wrong? Are you open to new experiences and new ways of thinking? Are you able to take constructive feed back? Do you have a good message for others? Can you see how your knowledge and experiences could be valuable to others? If there is a better way than the one(s) you have been following do you want to know what it is and will you let others show it to you?