My 18yo daughter graduates from school tomorrow.

Angelica stays late at school tonight - preparing pranks for us staid old baby-boomers who amble up in the morning.

How will they prank us?

By disrupting our habitual experience.

The world is full of disrupters. Every generation thinks theirs is the worst.

Back at the start of the 19th century, a train was a concept. When real trains showed up - slowly - it was a shocking. It revolutionized life. Suddenly - fruit could travel from one end of England to the other.

In a day!

5.52am and there she is.

Old, dedicated lady - with an ancient Japanese brush broom - relentlessly scratching away the autumn leaves that accumulate daily.

Why does she do it?

I run alongside the Meguro river, and her section of the pathway is pristine. I see no home nearby, no institutions, no reason why she would be so obsessed about keeping her little section clean.

But she does. She is there every day I am there.

Have you ever noticed - just when a student is starting to do best - they decide to leave?

Saying things like:

“Got so much to work on now, so grateful.”

Or

“I am feeling overwhelmed; I need time to digest.”

Or

“It’s getting hard to find time – I think I need a little break. I’ll be back.”

It’s crap. It’s the conscious mind being duped by the mammal inside.

Sonja Higgo, one of my star students - and her Self an experienced teacher of many years - just emailed me this note…

***

What I have noticed recently is that I benefit and enjoy doing the task I intended to do rather than procrastinating once again. As I experienced relief and joy about such a simple decision I found it really easy to change.

***

It was timely for me, as procrastination recently haunts my days.

I get up, make a list, and do very little of it. DAMN!

How do you manage the mammal in you?

The light is fading away in Tokyo as I write.

It's been a day of rest, love and thoughtful engagement. Do you rest?

I started to schedule in a full day of total rest after watching Dan Buettner's TED talk on "How to live to be 100+" - which is definitely on my list of things to accomplish.

A number of kind readers picked up from my hospital blog, that my love affair with hospitals all started as a 2 year old boy, tied to a bed for 3 months. When asked about how I could have endured such a thing, I found my Self replying:

"The pain is at the heart of why I can keep going."

To do truly transform your life, it's an advantage to have a death wish.

It’s an image I have…

A true image from an event that happened.

I am 10, riding on a bicycle in a loose T-shirt, hands free. Happy.

Suddenly there’s a hole in the road, and my bike falls over, sending me sliding along a pile of pebbles. My exposed belly is sandpapered by the little stones. I skid to a halt face down in the dirt.

I am in agonizing pain, my belly ripped open by the rocks.

It happened when I was 10, and it is still a vivid memory.

While everyone is rushing off to master the latest science about our miraculous human brain, I might take a right turn and follow the ethologists for a bit.

Is it just a coincidence that one of our finest advocates - Noble prizing-winning scientist Nikko Tinbergen - was himself an ethologist?

Why my sudden fascination?

Losing a lover as a partner in life has highlighted for me how much of an animal I am. I mean that in a clinical, not derogatory sense. I am a mammal, and so are you.

Or even hugged by a chimpanzee?

I haven't, but Zoologist Desmond Morris relates his experience of both in his book Initmate Behaviours:

Teaching as a teacher is a horrible thing to do to a student.

For a start, it's an arrogant position to start from. How do you know they don't know? When you project ignorance onto another person, it's a pretty egonic position.

"I am the one who knows."

How does it feel to be taught by someone like that?

Of course, SOME kind of teaching is all about information, BUT NOT our work. There is no curiculum for Alexander's discovery.

How can you learn what you already know?