Why are humans so slow to learn? Somehow despite our parents telling us not to touch the oven because it’s hot, most of still have test the theory ourselves. One of the most humbling experiences in life is to believe you have learned a lesson only to have lift teach it to you again in another form. This got me thinking about what life lessons I began learning in my youth, that I have had to relearn again and again. I only hope that eventually these will be well practiced enough to be second nature. The first is to cultivate gratitude. I vividly remember one geography lesson where we played a game. Each team was given some raw materials and some tools. The rules were simple the same for everyone: make geometric shapes out of paper, sell them at the market rates and make the most money. Everyone set off with the typical gusto generated by a lesson that breaks the usual mould. At least until we began to notice things weren’t as fair as they seemed. One team, who had a precise pair of compasses was rapidly selling perfect circles, whilst another team with no scissors could only output wonky triangles. At the end of the game, each team was asked to assess their performance. The winning team reflected on their efficient production line system. The losing team felt they had been doomed to fail given they had only started with a pencil. It was true that the winning team had made their manufacturing process efficient, but in reality, that was not really the reason for their success. Their inability to recognise and be grateful for the tools and resources they had started with led to an over inflated sense of ‘deserving the win’. On the other hand, the losing team took no responsibility for their output. Instead blaming circumstances outside of their control and making frustrated comparisons with others. Most of your life you will find yourself somewhere in the middle, with many less fortunate beneath you and others more fortunate above. It is therefore important to remember to simultaneously be grateful for the many things you do have, take responsibility for those who may have less than you, and when things don’t pan out as you would have liked, spend less time blaming things around you. To that end I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Hymers, as my siblings and I were beneficiaries of your bursary scheme. I am therefore personally grateful for the contribution you made to my education and perhaps more importantly to the development of my teenage self! The second lesson I began to learn during my time at schools is captured best in the words of Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, only trade offs. I must admit this one has served me well as a policy maker. At school, my favourite subjects were maths, science and electronics and as such I was trained that solutions do exist and that they can be found. So you can forgive me for being a little surprised, that reality tends not to be so easy to pin down. This truth hit me first in my late teens when I developed a hormone deficiency that prevented me from attending school full time. Due to a combination of the flexible input from my teachers and my own resolve, my grades remained good. My aspiration to go to Cambridge was still within my grasp, but my body was letting me down. So what do you choose? An easier maths course at a different uni, or take a risk on Cambridge where I’d felt most at home with others. What would be a more enjoyable day to day life? What would make me happiest in the long run? I decided to take a chance on Cambridge and truthfully my first year was awful. The pace of life both socially and academically made making friends hard and I only just scaped through my end of year exams. Perhaps it wasn’t possible for me to complete this course without becoming a recluse doing so. All my fears had been realised and I wondered if I should quit and if I had misjudged the whole situation. But truthfully, I shouldn’t have been surprised as what I was experiencing was the bad end of the trade-off that I knew I had made. I begrudgingly decided that if both deep friendships and maths were important to me, I needed to make some changes to my lifestyle and I went back for a second year. Slowly but surely things began to evolve. By the end of my time at Cambridge, I had developed not only lifelong friends but the pride that comes from testing your academic ability to the limit. I know this appears like a story of resilience. But the other lesson I learned is about opportunity cost. When you say ‘yes’ to something you implicitly say no to something else. Therefore, everything has a cost. I don’t say this to scare you, but to remind you to ask yourself what price am I willing to pay to achieve this goal. Being conscious of this enables you to be a more deliberate agent in your own life. Someone who is able to acknowledge the multiplicity of factors that fulfil you and who might avoid waking up in 15 years time having achieved one dream but at the expense of all else. From the stories I have told so far it’s probably not that hard to tell what type of kid I was. I was the one that the rest of the class rolled their eyes at when the homework was to design a poster and I came into school with a 3d pop out masterpiece, or who asked a question at the end of class that triggered a long rant from the teacher and lost them half of break time. It is this version of me, who after receiving the score for my geography coursework walked over to my teacher to innocently request an explanation for the one lost mark. So that I might ‘learn for the future!’ Mrs Copeland just looked me direct in the eye and laughed. Sometimes Emily That’s life. Her reply was the first step for me in learning to take life a little less seriously. Or rather learning to discern the things that ought to be taken seriously and otherwise learning to laugh at oneself. Laughter is an amazing thing, its infectious, it brings perspective and it can help us gently accept the weirdest and ugliest parts of ourselves. Many things in life don’t have the stakes that we believe they do and a recognising your idiosyncratic perspectives are not in fact the singular divine truth is an important developmental milestone for us all! On the theme of taking life a little less seriously I would like to wrap up by reading an excerpt of a book by the whimsical children’s writer Dr Seuss. The book is titled ‘Oh the places you’ll go” and is as a reminder to me that truth can be found in the most unlikely places. Im sorry to say But sadly its true That bang ups and hang ups can happen to you So be sure when you step Step with care and great tact And remember that life’s a great balancing act. Just never forget to be dextrous and deft and never mix up your right foot with your left And you will succeed Yes! You will indeed 98 and ¾% guaranteed. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit locusgroup.substack.com
