AUTONOMY IN THE TIME OF THE CORONO VIRUS
In the Metamedicine path I designed for this 2020 LEARNING FREEDOM, after exploring, pacifying and integrating AGGRESSIVITY as a FUNCTIONAL ENERGY that we all MUST KNOW HOW TO DISPOSE I had put on the calendar the evening dedicated to AUTONOMY by presenting it this way:
“How many of us think we are autonomous, perhaps because we are working and financially independent, or because from an early age we have been used to fending for ourselves? But is this really being AUTONOMOUS?How hard do you struggle to do everything on your own? How does it make you feel to think you can rely only on your own strength? Does being autonomous mean being free? We will discover together what autonomy really is and what we have believed it to be instead by making it an act of will.”
I believe that today, more than ever before, the issue of AUTONOMY is central-both in the immediate term, to move through this urgency we are going through, and as a personal and collective evolutionary step to LEARN FREEDOM
What does it mean to be autonomous in the time of coronavirus?
Many things-but let’s start here.
Many people find themselves home from work or having to manage work from home, have their children home from school, with no activities/wanderings outside the home to support them in spending their days.
Everything that used to be delegated to the outside (schooling, taking care of one’s health, time…) is now back in our hands.
The education and training of our children, our health and the management of our time are back to being our business…ours alone, there is no longer delegation but rather assumption of responsibility
Responsibility for the upbringing and education of children
Responsibility for health (our own and others’) – meaning that it is now up to us to act responsibly for our own health without thinking of delegating our neglect to the already collapsing health care system
Responsibility for managing our time — there is no longer anyone to tell us what to do, how to spend our time …
In short, we have run out of alibis for not taking serious care of us and our family
I know, this is not necessarily perceived by everyone in these terms, and this depends on everyone’s MINDSET (the mental setting we grew up with and passed on to our children)
I take one out of all the example of the school:
How are parent friends doing with your coercive homeschooling experience?
Probably for some it is a welcome opportunity to try out something they have been sniffing for a long time but had not had the courage to put into action, but for others it is a real jinx to have to deal with it ..becoming the teacher or master of the moment to which their child resists
If you plan to sit next to your child giving instructions as if you were the teacher, it is highly likely that this will not have the desired effects of seeing your child happily projected on the books (homeschooler mom’s word ;-)).
If you do not usually have much time together it is possible that at first he will appreciate this increased closeness and interest on your part in the things that concern him but soon opposition may arise on his part and weariness and frustration on yours.
Here we go back to that concept of setting that I was telling you about
Question: How have you explained school to your children?
Let’s take an example: If by your setting you have explained schooling as “it is your duty to go to school, just as mom and dad go to work” it is likely that on the first occasion in which you are relieved of the assignment/duty …strike or pandemic it may be, your children will have joy parties — and little interest in going back to the books except because “it has to be done”
Maybe going to work is also mostly a duty for you, maybe you experience some satisfaction, gratification in terms of moral or economic recognition, maybe you have some nice coworker who makes the day more pleasant but basically what drives you to get up every day to go to work is duty – if something or someone relieved you from this duty you would probably celebrate as well (with the guaranteed salary of course!;-))
But is going to school really a duty?
Is there not something far more profound and important for our children that STUDY (whether at home or at school matters little) can represent for them?
To study means to know, to be informed, to stimulate and satisfy one’s curiosity, to acquire the tools to satisfy one’s curiosity and to learn what interests us, to develop our talents, to be able to make informed choices , to be able to make new discoveries …in short to BE FREE!
STUDY is one of the tools that can guarantee us AUTONOMY – but can something that comes through coercion guarantee us AUTONOMY? by an idea of duty decoupled from any pleasure, listening, respect for each person’s time and aptitude?
To accompany our children to understand this, to give them back the pleasure to study understood as a tool, a gift, for their autonomy and freedom, we need to go through a change of our mental setting as parents – this is more complex passage …perhaps …but it can be done by going to review our limiting beliefs, what led us to build a certain system of thinking.
The above applies to our children’s study as well as to every area of our lives.
It’s time to change the setting!
That’s why I value this evening dedicated to AUTONOMY (to LEARN FREEDOM) because each of us (adults-parents and non-parents) can get to change our setting, giving a new approach to our way of approaching life for the sake of ourselves and the young people to come.
See you on March 26 ONLINE 8 p.m.
for INFO, for reservations INFO@FRANCESCADALESSANDRO.NET
