A Well Rounded Education

  When we talk about "well rounded", we tend to mean someone who knows a bit of everything, in many subject areas. But when I personally think of well rounded, I do imagine people who can weather different kinds of cycles and seasons of life. Their shoulders are "round": meaning that they are able to carry different kinds of things on their backs, and their weight is spread evenly across their bodies. Of course, this is a metaphor, but it seems to be about facing the whole character and not flinching from even the shadow aspects of the self, even when a person is terrified of those aspects.
   In Buddhist philosophy, the metaphor of the lotus flower in the mud is one way of expressing how every situation, no matter how dire, is actually fertilizer for the growing plant. It's not about trying to separate good from bad or to suppress anything, but it's about clearly knowing not to identify ourselves with the material. This is hard to do, because even in movies and media, there is a tendency to want to punish things that people dislike or disown and reward the "good stuff". The problem with this is that we tend to depict this very triumph of good vs evil as something inherently violent. It is as though one disowns the violence by putting it forth onto others. I see this kind of retaliatory dynamic happen a lot, and it reflects the struggle to purge what is unsavory about ourselves and project it onto others. On the other hand, if a person can be truly okay with the material that comes to mind and not see themselves as "that" (simultaneous not identifying yet beholding), then there isn't a need to take it out on someone else. That someone else is just another voice in ourselves, or in the mind itself. There is no need to even feel bad; just feel okay about whatever feelings are emerging and not judge it as pure or impure, and then one begins to see it as shifting energy.