The Problem of Like

Near a coffee shop close to Bloor and St. George, the rain keeps falling. The rain pokes large bubbles into the growing pools below, as I edge across the street. When I am inside the store, I attempt to order an odd-sounding drink for my colleague, as per request. The name has “caramel” in it, followed by a string of ello’s. I am somehow confident that I can handle this complex order while my friend saves a spot for us in the crowded shop.

What was it again? Caramellellelo?

I scratch my head, as I ponder the vast menu of iced drinks, tea drinks, fruit drinks, and frothy drinks.

            The store clerk looks at me while leaning against the cash register. His eyes bulge through horn rimmed glasses which don’t appear to have lenses on them.

            “Sir, what can I get for you?”

            “Um..I’ll have the carmel—errere”

            “What? Can you say it again?” The clerk cups his hand to his ear, over the buzz and hum of  latte machines, blenders, and student hecklers.

            “Caram…that one,” I point to the second drink down a long list of long-sounding drinks, astride long pictures, featuring long faces in long lineups.

            “Oh…the caramel macchiato.” The clerk smiles slightly at my daft attempts to roll out r’s, in my plain-English, accidental accent. “What size?”

            “Um, medium.” I nod to myself, confident that medium would satisfy the sweetest tastebuds.

“Is that all you want?”

            “Um, no.” I finger the ten dollar bill crumpled in my pocket, and ponder the cost of a caramel macchiato and some other sweet concoction.

            The clerk glares.

            “I’ll have a mint tea,” I mumble. Funnily enough, I don’t even want a mint tea. So many sweet drinks line the menus, and yet I have to choose the one I am most familiar with.

            I wait for the crowd of teenagers to disperse from the cold drinks waiting aisle. Apparently, cold drinks with lots of fruit and chocolate are the fashionable thing, even when the weather starts to get cooler. The end of summer doesn’t faze the young ones. They smoothly grab their ice beverages and sidle out into the rain again, in droves.

            When I finally bring my order to the table, I start to share about the perils of language.  Learning a new language such as Mandarin or French, can have its perils. The biggest problem is motivation, or wanting to do something that might take quite a long time to master. And it isn’t quite so practical to learn either, when one may never really get to apply the language in a significant situation, such as work or professional life. I point out my idea that learning a new language can teach me how a good teacher guides. It can be a lesson in the actual dynamics of teaching and learning, or a kind of field research. I find it helpful to see language learning in this way, because that takes the pressure away from having to learn the language enough to be able to make conversation or write books.

            So much of what I am reading in education texts talks about like, or the role of liking in learning. For example, there are studies which show that liking one’s peers in a cooperative situation can accelerate the learning process. 

            Some studies point to extrinsic rewards such as points for each collaborative experience. People learn more when there is something to like about the process. This is likely true because people want to be around what they like. Sweetening education through amiable experiences or camaraderie can be a great motivator to the educational process.

            But what happens when like becomes attachment? What happens when the things I like to learn become so deeply engrained in me  that I don’t want to learn anything that creates discomfort, or is potentially unsettling? And I wonder, when it comes to working with others, how much of that is the result of dynamics of like? Doesn’t like also come with dislike? And can this create suffering, to like one thing and thus dislike others? 

             It’s possible that like may lead to addiction if one is not careful. But another point is that it creates an equation between like and learning. But some kinds of learning are not reinforcing, let alone rewarding. There are certain kinds of learning experiences that are extremely unsettling, yet they are forms of learning nonetheless. 

            If one is conditioned to think of learning as something that satisfies or fulfills, or promises finality, what happens to those other kinds of learning, where there is no outcome, no finality, no certainty, and no rewards? Maybe those latter get consigned to the useless. But are they not also forms of learning about ourselves and how we react to challenging or unrewarding experiences? Could one still learn something from that which bears no sweet fruit?

            The problem I see in like is that like is a kind of conditional acceptance. I wonder, if we can see all situations as equally of the same mind, would we keep craving the problematic like?