18,200 Hours: An Apology

 

18,200 Hours: An Apology

Look at you. Finally finishing Year 12. Our society has given you thirteen years of education to prepare you for your life ahead. For roughly 18,200 hours we, as your teachers, have contained you in institutions and busied ourselves with teaching and raising you to be someone of substance. 

It’s at times like this that I reflect on my humble contribution to who you have become. 

There’s something quite special about an 18-year-old on the brink of independence. I see that spark in your eyes. That anticipation in your step. The hope in your voice when you talk of your freedom from this place. 

I take some pride in it, because I feel in many ways, I have fanned that flame. I ignited that fire. I taught you to expect great things and filled your imagination with a future of hope, meaning and importance. I taught you to find beauty and meaning everywhere. I made it my mission to help you believe that you could make the world anything you wanted it to be. 

But the path you’re about to walk is one I’ve already travelled. I too graduated high school with a sparkle in my eye and visions of a grand future. But I was fundamentally unprepared for what was to come, as are you. I barely made it to the other side and learnt the lessons that mattered in painful and difficult ways. In the process, I lost pieces of myself and now carry scars that will never heal. It makes me wonder – what can we do to better prepare you for that road? 

Of those 18,200 hours you were in our care, the pride I feel for what we’ve taught you, is equally matched by the guilt of what we have not. 

While I’ll never regret filling you with hope, I regret that I may have set the bar of your expectations too high, accidentally pushing happiness just out of reach and then never teaching you what to do when your hope in it fades.

While I’ll never regret teaching you to be an idealist who believes in equality, humanity and justice, I regret not teaching you what to do when those things are nowhere to be found or when you inadvertently find yourself a barrier to their existence. 

While I’ll never regret teaching you to find meaning in all things, I do regret not teaching you what to do when that meaning cannot be found or doesn’t make sense or fails to give you an answer.

While I’ll never regret teaching you to find your spark, I do regret not teaching you what to do when it is taken from you or no longer brings you joy. 

While I’ll never regret teaching you that you are special and unique, I do regret not teaching you what to do when that self-love slides into arrogance and entitlement. 

While I’ll never regret teaching you to read and interpret, I do regret not teaching you what to do when the weight of the words you read drags you under, when it leaves you with a disgust for humanity or in existential crisis. 

While I’ll never regret teaching you to value and freely give love, kindness and forgiveness, I do regret not teaching you what to do when you don’t receive them in return. 

I taught you how to be inclusive of everyone but not what to do when you find yourself the outsider.

I taught you how to be successful but not what to do when the success isn’t enough, when it doesn’t bring you meaning or joy and the bar just keeps moving ever higher.

I taught you how to find beauty in little things but not what to do when the black dog of depression comes biting, or when anxiety takes over even your quietest moments. 

I taught you to imagine a future filled with possibility, empowerment and fun and not what to do when your life is weighed down in boredom and the mundane. 

I taught you to give your best but not how to cope with the barrage of competitiveness of corporate workplaces and the pressure of increasing pay checks. 

I taught you to use the laws of nature to your advantage and not what to do when those same laws give you a brutal reminder of the fragility of life and in their meaningless force cause you pain, fear and take away from you those you love most. 

I taught you how to stick by others through tough times but not what to do when those you once trusted, judge and criticise you in your hour of need. 

I haven’t prepared you for what happens when you fly away from this nest, just like they didn’t prepare me. And as you stretch out your wings, I’m filled with a familiar dread, thinking of where you might land when you get shot down from the skies. 

You’re pulling with all your might to break free from our education system and when we do suddenly let go, the momentum will leave you stumbling into the future and there may not be anyone waiting to break your fall. 

Your graduating walk down that assembly aisle feels like both the first exciting steps of an adventure and a mournful procession into the hopeless unknown. I’m so happy to see you walk your own path and yet so grieved at what you might find along the way. 

We have not prepared you for this. 

Forgive me. Forgive us. 

Maybe it was not our place to teach you this. Maybe you needed to find it elsewhere. Maybe these lessons are reserved only for those lucky enough to have someone in their life to show it to them. Maybe these lessons are too important to be left to the maybes. 

If not us, who? If not now, when?

Were the lessons we taught you in those 18,200 precious hours really the ones that mattered? 

The Reformist Princess