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  • One of the finest things about being a baby is that our minds can be read by others.

  • Without us needing to say anything, people around us will have a guess at determining

  • what we intend - and, typically, theyll get it right.

  • Theyll correctly surmise that we are craving some milk or that the sun is shining in our

  • eyes, that it’s time for a snooze or that we want to jiggle the keys again.

  • This may be highly gratifying and important to us in infancy, but it can set up dangerous

  • expectations for the rest of our lives.

  • It can breed in us the sense that anyone - especially anyone who claims to care about us - should

  • be able to determine our deepest aspirations and wishes without us needing to say very

  • much.

  • We can stay silent; they will mindread.

  • This explains a widespread tendency to assume that others must know what we mean and want

  • without us having actually told them anything clearly.

  • We assume that our lover must know what were upset about, that our friends should realise

  • where our sensitivities lie and that our colleagues must intuitively grasp how we want things

  • done in presentations.

  • Furthermore, we assume that if they don’t, then it must be a sign that they are being

  • wicked, deliberately obtuse or stupid - and we are therefore justified in falling into

  • a sulk, that curious pattern of behaviour whereby we punish people for having committed

  • offences whose precise nature we refuse to reveal to them.

  • But in all this, we have, somewhere along the path of our development, forgotten the

  • fundamental importance of teaching.

  • Teaching isn’t a distinctive profession focused on imparting knowledge about science

  • and the humanities to the under 18s.

  • It’s a skill that we must put into practice every day of our lives - and the subject we

  • must laboriously and patiently become experts in and deliverlessonson is called

  • Ourselves’: what we like, what were scared of, what were hopeful about, what

  • we want from the world and how we look for things to be formatted

  • Babies, for all their intelligence and charm, only care about a handful of things; an average

  • adult has thousands of very set ideas on all manner of topics, from the right way to govern

  • a country to the right way to shut the fridge door.

  • We should strive to deliver a fewseminarson our views before allowing ourselves to

  • grow resentful and sullen.

  • Yet how understandable - in a sense - if we should fail so badly in our teaching duties.

  • Were not necessarily being lazy or unkind.

  • It’s merely unbelievable that strangers would actually require us to talk them through

  • yet another chapter of the dense instruction manual of our deep selves.

  • We never had to bother with all that in the early years.

  • We may be more nostalgic for our infancy than we might

  • have dared to imagine.

One of the finest things about being a baby is that our minds can be read by others.

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