Who to ask for the advice? Mentor or Guru

 Waqar Ahmed | CEO The Productivity Science

Since we all love school education and most of us have already been through this process, let’s talk about the issues that we never learned while we were there. Education in terms of degree does not guarantee the wisdom of understanding the true nature of the Universe. True education is something that enters our minds and changes our behavior towards reason and understanding. [Let me clarify this, it’s an opinion, so go ahead and seek our own definition of education.] Human is born ignorant. Our learning is always based on encounters with the new surroundings which also include our school.

Ignorance is good until we are children, but as we grow old, society expects us to behave humanely. To behave the way society allows us to behave, we are sent to different institutions to learn it. There in the institutions, we are taught by Gurus (teachers) who know everything. Each statement for us as a child is a prophecy that cannot be questioned and challenged. We are taught to believe that sky is blue, so we believe it and start convincing everyone around us to believe in the same words that we have been fed from school. Bogus!

We get obsessed with the term Guru in our earlier life. It happens naturally because our initial learning came through those Gurus who we thought can’t be wrong. Their intellect is always perfect therefore we must obey their commandments. Our society supplemented this belief, and our parents preached those Gurus as the saints. No option left for children to doubt the mechanism.

When we can’t counter-question someone, it becomes clear that our intellectual growth won’t prosper.

But here is a good thing.

There is someone we can ask questions of our choice and he would always answer those questions with utmost fervor. This person is a mentor. Luckily this mentor is not related to Gurus who know-all-the-stuff always. A mentor is someone who understands your viewpoint. His answer is not from the level he personally stands at, instead he answers in a way that one easily understands. 

When a child asks any question to a mentor, the mentor won’t answer him as being the mentor, he will pretend to become a child for a while and try his best to answer the questions in a way that the child can understand.

Who is a mentor?

The mentor can be any person, your friend, parents, siblings, even the school teacher. You can say that this x, y, z is my mentor by looking at these few traits:

• When you are around that person, you don’t hesitate to ask as many questions as you want
• No matter how opposite your ideas are, that person will always respond positively
• When you are with that person, you will notice, he is as inquisitive as you are regarding any common topic
• Mentor will never represent himself as perfect
• Mentor will always try to find a common ground of understanding the topic, and would not present himself from the superior knowledgable side. He will act as your close friend always.

Most academics believe that when two friends of the same age and class sit together and start learning about something, they are more likely to learn much better in comparison to sitting in a class and listening to a Guru. Two friends who know each other very well can openly talk about their limitations in the topic and with a joint resolution process to learn further about the topic from new resources. This is what mostly we call true mentorship where both sides are involved in the active learning process without one’s side being dominant over the other. 

If you want to learn something, find a mentor. Or be that one mentor for someone you want to hang around with by yourself.

Thank you for your company!