But are you ready to learn?

“Experience teaches only the teachable.” — Aldous Huxley

Everything that happens to us can be seen as an opportunity to learn. Taking that attitude can certainly make challenges easier to bear. The good stuff offers a chance to remember gratitude, too, and to acknowledge the wonder that exists all around us every day. And we can find teachers in those with whom we interact, whether it’s someone who shows us kindness, patience and love, or if it’s someone who is prickly, abrasive or hutrful.

Recently, I’ve been watching “Survivor” episodes from several years ago. I’ve loved that show since Season 1 in 2000, but I moved to England soon after that, and missed most of them. Given that they’re now airing Season 46, I missed a lot!

From comments I’ve heard about the show over the years, it’s an acquired taste. A “love it or hate it” kinda thing, or at least “love it or can’t be bothered.”

I love it for a few reasons, but the main one is that from a psychology standpoint, it’s fascinating. It’s like watching live experiments like Pavlov and his dogs, or Schrödinger and his hypothetical cat (Wait. Maybe not. Good luck trying to watch that one), or the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971.

Actually, the results of that last one were shocking. Stanford professor Philip Zimbardo wanted to learn how individuals conformed to societal roles. The experiment split 24 male college students into two groups, prisoners and guards, and in the makeshift basement “prison” they were expected to act their roles, e.g. the “guards” had 8-hour shifts.

You can read the results fully for yourself, but it’s important to note that they had to stop the experiment after just 6 days. “We realized how ordinary people could be readily transformed from the good Dr. Jekyll to the evil Mr. Hyde,” Zimbardo wrote.

I’m fascinated by what happens to people in unusual situations. I’m curious about the choices they make, and what influences them, such as personality traits, group mentality, cultural differences within the group, or environmental factors. Especially when $1,000,000 is at stake, as on Survivor.

And given the way their situation keeps changing on Survivor, I find it to be extra intriguing. Imagine you’re split into tribes. Now you have to work with the others in your own tribe to build a shelter, figure out how to make fire, find water, find food, share the work and rewards. You begin to bond with your tribe-mates. And because you know people will be voted off, alliances are formed within the group so you’re both working with and against your fellow tribe members. The point is to “outwit, outplay and outlast” everyone else. But you need their help to do it.

Meanwhile, the tribes participate in reward challenges (which throws some jealousy into the pot), as well as challenges for immunity. Losing tribe has to turf someone. When total participants get to about 10 people, tribes merge to become one with everyone fighting for individual immunity.

Throughout the show, the plotting, scheming and manipulation blow my doors off. I couldn’t do it. I’m not built for secrets and lies, or faking being trustworthy. I’m an open book; my heart is on my sleeve. Although it’s “a game,” it’s still about creating real bonds with real people. And it gets increasingly messy as numbers dwindle because some of those people you ruthlessly plotted to blindside to get rid of them are now going to be on the jury. That means they’ll be voting for the person who should win the cash. You’ve lied and plotted to get them out but now you have to hope they like you enough to give you the money.

Complex? Yeah. No kidding.

So what’s up with the mini Survivor lesson? It’s relevant for context in today’s discussion.

In Season 14, there was a delightful 54-year-old Malaysian computer engineer called Yau-Man. He was a tiny little man, the oldest in the group, and everything about him looked too weak and frail to manage more than a day with the harsh conditions and some brutal physical challenges ahead. Even his John-Lennon-style, wire-rimmed glasses looked like they wouldn’t make it more than a day or two.

Typically, the oldest in the tribes are eliminated quickly for no other reason than age. And although Yau-Man didn’t perform all that well in challenges or other ways, he was likeable and somehow kept hanging on.

Partway into the season, he began dominating in challenges, helping his tribe win and later winning some of the individual immunity challenges, too. This put a target on his back as he was playing a great social game and was also proving to be a far stronger physical player than anyone could have imagined. He was the kind of player who wins.

There was an incredibly immature young man on that season who went by the nickname, Dreamz. Not only was he rude, offensive and insulting, he lied, cheated and betrayed his fellow tribe mates over and over again. Surprisingly (understated), there were some who actually liked him but I was rooting for him to get lost from the start.

Somehow, he made it quite far in the game. If there had been any doubt about his character up to that point, he showed his true colours in the last couple of episodes. When they were down to six people left, the prize for an individual challenge was a $60,000 truck. Dreamz mentioned that he didn’t even have a driving license but would sure love the truck.

Yau-Man won the challenge and made a deal with Dreamz. He would give Dreamz the truck if Dreamz promised to give up the immunity necklace if he won it when they were down to the final four people (last immunity challenge before the jury votes for a winner). If Dreamz agreed, this would guarantee that Yau-Man would be one of the finalists — i.e. one of the three options for jury votes to win.

Further, Yau-Man said that even if Dreamz did win immunity but didn’t follow through and honour his word, he could keep the truck, even though it would mean Yau-Man would not be one of the final three and would have no shot at the million bucks.

To save you the blow-by-blow, I’ll sum up quickly and say that Dreamz did win the immunity challenge on the day when there were only four people left. Yau-Man didn’t pressure him to hand over the necklace. Didn’t nudge or coax him to do the right thing. And although I wouldn’t have trusted Dreamz AT ALL based on his weeks of lying and betrayals, I was impressed when he said he was going to do the right thing because he wanted his young son to watch the show and be proud of his dad for having honoured his word.

But — not surprisingly — he did not give up the immunity necklace, and Yau-Man was voted out by the remaining three, as no one wanted to sit next to him in front of the jury. They were all happy to see him defeated at that crucial late stage; he would have won by a landslide. (Side note: After the winner was announced, jurors were asked who’d have voted for Yau-Man if he’d made it to final three. A show of hands proved that yes, he would have won.)

Not only did Dreamz keep the necklace, he made no offer to at least return the truck.

In this video, you see Yau-Man win the truck, make the deal with Dreamz, and be betrayed.

But the next night when the finalists were pleading their cases to the jury, Yau-Man told him to keep it, to enjoy it, and not to feel guilty for it. He took full responsibility for the choice he had made in making that deal and took it as a huge life lesson — one that cost him the million plus the truck. He added, “My credo in life is love many, trust few and do wrong to none.” Throughout the entire season, it was clear that he does live this way.

Oh, and being one of the two runners-up in the final three, Dreamz got $100,000. So along with the truck, he was handsomely rewarded for completely betraying Yau-Man, a kind and trusting soul who truly “believed Dreamz would do the right thing.”

To be honest, I’m not so sure I could handle that situation with as much grace as Yau-Man did. I can relate to it in a significant way. Because of my trusting nature, I didn’t legally protect myself during a 3-year marriage and when my husband hid a ton of debt on me, I lost everything I’d worked for in the previous 30 years. This included losing a sweet little home I’d managed to get as a single parent; the proceeds from the sale paid off the entire debt. My safety net was gone. I was furious but had “done the right thing.”

When another secret was revealed shortly thereafter, I was done. I left the marriage, and with a poor housing market we took a loss on our cottage. I had to start over with nothing and after a life of mostly raising babies, my work history was sporadic self-employment. I could forget trying to get a decent-paying job (but I sure did try).

Meanwhile, my ex-husband snatched up a new wife, got a 100% mortgage and new home, kept his great job, pension benefits, and had a huge inheritance waiting for him someday.

It’s been an incredibly tough one to get past, knowing I’m responsible for my own choices, as Yau-Man was, and ultimately accepting that. But Yau-Man had no resentment in his heart. Not a word of “Yes, but you (blah blah blah about Dreamz’ part in the fiasco).” I can’t say the same for myself with regard to my former husband.

I was angry and resentful after his many promises to always make sure I was okay, especially because I’d lost my house and bailed him out. And when eventually, I sent him an email asking if he was really okay with leaving things this way, he didn’t reply. Later, his brother told me that on receiving it, my ex-husband blocked my emails.

It took years for me to finally stop adding, “Yes, but he…” when thinking about who was responsible for the financial disaster in which I’d found myself. It didn’t matter that childhood beliefs about not deserving and not being a bother fed into that situation. It didn’t matter that my husband was not the honourable man everyone thought he was. It didn’t matter that he’d promised promised promised to make sure I was all right.

At the end of the day, I was the one who had trusted him and had made various extremely poor decisions that landed me right where I was. My former husband had proven to be an excellent teacher for me and I learned some exceptionally hard lessons over several years after that experience. I don’t need to stress about what he should or shouldn’t have done; his actions are none of my business. He’s going to have his own karmic consequence for his treatment of me. And I’ll have mine for how I think of him and behave toward him.

Watching Yau-Man take full responsibility for having lost the truck and the million bucks, and doing so with grace and a smile, was incredibly inspiring. I might finally be at the point where I’ve stopped pointing the finger at my ex-husband for the terribly challenging years after we split (thanks to those lessons I’d learned), although I can’t say I’m as gracious about it as Yau-Man.

But I aspire to being like that, to having that attitude. I’m doing my best to learn from his example.

This is one of the gifts of watching Survivor. In such extreme and harsh conditions physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, it forces the “survivors” into their absolute worst, and gives them the opportunity to bring out their absolute best. Some rise to that challenge; others do not.

This is how all of us become teachers for each other; even when we’re at our worst, we offer opportunities for others to learn. And therefore, we are all students, too.

Yau-Man was obviously a teacher for Dreamz (and their fellow contestants plus millions of viewers, like yours truly). And equally, Dreamz was a teacher for Yau-Man. Or I should say — each of them provided opportunities for the other to learn. We can’t “teach” if no one learns. I suspect that Yau-Man learned a lot more than Dreamz did…

Another little note: Shortly after Yau-Man’s season, he was invited back for another shot at Survivor. Because the other players had seen him outwit, outplay and almost outlast his fellow contestants in his season, they voted him out early on, knowing he was a huge threat and would likely win the million if he made to the final three.

Yep. Survivor is a fascinating study in human behaviour.

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