Reflecting
The classical world gives us two quite contradictory messages about reflecting upon ourselves. Narcissus was punished for spurning the nymph Echo by being cursed to fall in love with the first person he saw. As he went to drink, he saw his own reflection and fell in love with it. Subsequently he stared and longed for himself until he fell into the water and drowned. The flowers called 'daffodils' in English, are called Narcissi in Latin or Italian, because they hang their faces over water and look at their own reflection; and someone who is self obsessed we call a 'narcissist'. It is a rather beautiful image, but the message is that contemplating ourselves is vain, arrogant and destructive.
Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher, had an entirely other message. Socrates when asked to sum up all philosophical wisdom proclaimed simply 'know thyself'. To be fair, unlike Narcissus, he was also famously ugly in the view of his peers! But the more important contrast is the intellectual one: for Socrates, wisdom is impossible if we do not understand ourselves, our ways of thinking and prejudices, in order to start to overcome them, or at least not drown in them.
At ISA we occasionally ask students to go home and reflect on important issues that have arisen at school as part of our restorative practices. But simply asking them to stare at themselves like Narcissus leads nowhere. To start to edge our reflective practice more towards Socrates and less towards Narcissus, we are starting to send home a simple guide to reflection with some basic tools. Rather like Socrates, you do not need to save up 'reflection' for a crisis - and we invite you to take a look at see if some of the tools or questions might support you or your children as they begin to get to know themselves better, or share with us things that work in your family so others might benefit.
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