Rippy and Graham Dusseldorp

In some random way, I clicked on a short interview with two people who have had near death experiences. During the interview, one of them said about what he learned about life during his near death experience was that life was all about love and relationships. Nothing else mattered. Which reminded me of what Joyce has said, about putting your relationship with your child first (and presumably your partner) and then figuring out how to fit everything else around that.

At one point the interviewer brought up a book written by a nurse who interviewed 200 dying patients about their regrets and the top 5 regrets were:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard
3. I wish I had the courage to express my feelings
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
5. I wish I had let myself be happier

While watching this short clip, I realized that the core of my life is all about the joyous relationships I have with Graham, Gianluca, and Gisele and how well aligned my life is to the five wishes above. I love that unschooling leads people closer to this wonderful life.

Here are the links:
http://www.jeffprobst.com/posts/2619_they_ve_seen_heaven_and_they_re_telling_all/index.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying


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Sandra Dodd

Thank you, Rippy.

Very often people blow by the advice to work on their relationship with their children, in a way that sounds like "Yeah, yeah, but how do we UNSCHOOL?"

Create a happy life, we say, and then they get really cranky because they want to know how to teach kids to do long division, not all this fluffed up crap about "relationship" and "happiness."

Either the world is full of math, history, science, music, art and language (written, spoken, sung, acted on stage) or it's NOT. If the world is not MADE of those things, then schools are dealing in absolutely off-track trivia. If the world IS made of those things, then unschooling, when it involves living at peace, with an adult or two who cares about each child and spends time and thought to know him or her personally and directly, will create a feedback situation where happiness and relationship lead to learning, and learning leads to more happiness and a better relationship.

Sandra