Don’t compare yourself to others. Let go of striving and accept the world as it is, not as you’d like it to be. Practice humility and gratitude. Forty-three years, and this is the Buddhist wisdom I’ve learned to embrace, the foundation on which my inner peace rests. Until I got my son’s first report card.
“He’s in kindergarten,” I told my husband when I heard the report was imminent. “Why does he need a report card?”
Still, I was confident that my little guy would bring home an unequivocal proclamation of his intelligence. When I was his age, our grading system included E’s, V.G.’s, G’s and a lower classification I can’t remember because I was a straight-E student. Cai’s school uses E, but it stands for “Exceeds Expectations” rather than “Excellent.”
I sat back and waited for the Es to roll in.
Cai did not receive a single E — not one for the duration of an eight-page report card. Eight pages of evaluation and judgment. If it weren’t my child who was being scrutinized, I may have laughed. Read more