"The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see."
"Be loving. And if you don't feel loving, be kind. Kindness is simply love in her daily clothes."
I'm a big fan of simple, true, thought-provoking quotes (as many of you already know). The two quotes above resonated deeply for me when I read them earlier today: I make the effort, every day, to live according to these precepts. The first quote speaks to me as a teacher and coach: I've been learning for 30 years how to be better at showing people 'where to look,' while resisting telling them 'what to see' - a real discipline for me. And as for the second one: as a human being, I aspire always to at least be kind, even when I don't feel loving.
Both quotes are ascribed, in their hundreds of internet repetitions, to someone named "Alexandra Trenfor." Because I found these quotes so inspirational and wise, I wanted to discover more about their author, and so spent a good deal of time looking for her online. While there were hundreds of links to both quotes, there were no links to any information about Ms. Trenfor. The more I looked, the more the mystery deepened...I was completely unable to find any record of anyone by that name, period, in any database to which I have access. (Even at
As I searched, I began to wonder why I was so determined to find out more about this person, and why it was so unbelievable to me that I couldn't. And I suddenly realized that I believe something very strange: If something seems very inspiring or wise to me, I assume the person who expressed it must be famous. And if not, I start to question whether it's really that wise or inspiring after all.
I think we all have some version of this belief, and it hugely limits our ability to learn from our environment. Maybe your version is, "If the person didn't graduate from an excellent university..." or "If the person isn't white..." or "If the person isn't from my country..." Or isn't Republican, or Democrat, straight, gay, old, young...
You get the point: How often do we dismiss truly valuable insight or knowledge because we don't like the package it comes wrapped in?
The good news is, having begun to recognize these silly beliefs, these limitations we place on where we're willing to look for wisdom or learning - we can let them go. We can decide to judge what others say to us, or what we read or hear, purely on the merit we find in it.
I encourage you to try it for a day (I'm going to): take in everything you hear or see as potentially useful and interesting; and then accept or reject it based only upon whether it actually is useful or interesting - vs. based upon how it came to you, or from whom. I suspect it will be a liberating experience.
And whoever you may be, Alexandra Trenfor, I thank you.
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