We were rushing to synagogue for Rosh Hashonah evening services last night. Susan had set the alarm. I went to turn off the television. Just as I was about to hit the remote, someone called a “faith partner,” was saying that if he and his wife could help one person out of poverty it would change generations to come. That brief comment stuck with me throughout services last night because only yesterday morning, as I was coming down the hallway a got an uplifting. A student opened the door for me. She smiled. She looked familiar. She introduced herself. I hadn’t seen her for four years. She said that she was graduating in December. I asked her what she was going to do. She proudly told me she was hired by the Atlanta Falcons’ publicity office. The vision of complimentary tickets flashed across my impish mind. Then, she hit me with a ton of bricks, very nice bricks.

“I’ve been looking for you. I’m going around to the two or three people on this campus who made a real difference in my life. You’re one of them. You asked me what I was going to do. You’ve taught it is more important to think about who I want to be. I’d like to just talk with you next week and tell you how much you’ve meant to me.”

Surprised, stunned, as I stuttered to utter a “thank you,” I have to admit that a wave of gratification and fulfillment swept over me. I think, if it wasn’t for leaving my family, I would have died happy at that moment.

Is it a sign of aging–“maturing” sounds better– that I am measuring myself less and less by the length of my resume, and measuring more and more what I do by the good I am doing, by the significance of what I am doing, by the how much I matter, by the extent to which I am enriching lives through service?

The irony is that living a professional life focused on service to students is quite self-centered. It simply feels good, very good to do good, to matter, and to make a difference. It’s so much more gratifying than one devoted to the research, publication, promotion, appointment, reward treadmill. Making a positive difference creates a feeling of gratification that’s hard, almost impossible, to get from a publication or a grant or a promotion. I’m not talking about pleasure or even satisfaction; I’m talking about fulfillment.

And do you want to know the secret? The route to significance isn’t long and convoluted or even difficult, for the ground doesn’t have to quiver for an earth-shaking event to occur. Every act has an impact on someone. Everything we say and do sends a message to someone. Every act, every signal, every message that has a positive impact on someone’s life is significant. It doesn’t take much strength to lift a lid and it doesn’t take much time uplift someone. It doesn’t take much time to be significant.

And you don’t have to have a life-long impact. One day, even a moment in that day, will do. We each can do things that are significant every day for that day: a kind compliment, a spark of hope, a smile, a simple “hello,” a “thank you,” a gesture of faith and belief, an encouraging word, a few seconds of listening, a light touch of support, making a student feel wanted and valuable. Anything that brightens and lightens a day of anyone whom you meet, anything that will help a student help him/herself become the person he or she is capable of becoming, will do. And yet, I have discovered that as a simple act of kindness or respect or mindfulness or love becomes a habit, those little things will become more frequent. They will almost unconsciously natural. They will become an imperative. They will grow in size. That momentary impact will lengthen in something that lasts a lifetime, and you will make the world a better place. Then, your legacy will match that of the greatest of philanthropists.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

This muggy, cool, dark morning, I didn’t walk along the streets. A week-long, low-level head cold has grounded me. Nevertheless, I walked out to the fishpond where I engaged in some contemplative sitting and coffee sipping. As the skies grayed, I got up and did some contemplative strolling through my garden. Stuff pent up over the idle summer is still gushing out. The pressure of the flow was increased by a tiring and exhilarating day-long strategic planning retreat I participated in yesterday as well as the anticpation of tomorrow’s “public showing” of Reconstruction sculptures by the communities in one class. There are times, such as this one, that all this throws me into something of a strange mood that’s part practical, part poetic, part spiritual, and certainly pensive.

As I was walking through the garden, I noticed a galardia. At a distance and quick glance in the dim light, the blooms on that plant looked the same. As I slowed down and focused, as I knelt down before it, as I handled each bloom, as I intently peered at each one separately, I saw that each bloom was in fact different from all the other blooms. Each was unique, exquisite and impressive in it’s own right. Each was neither more nor less beautiful. Each was just different. Each had its own sacredness. Each was a one of a kind without trying to be. Each was created that way.

Someone once said that life is our real classroom. How true. And what does life in my garden teach me? It teaches me that in the mundane there is ceaseless wonder. It teaches me that if every day I see and listen, I will not be disappointed. It teaches me to make proverbial mountains out of the garden’s smallest, daintiest, and most delicious of proverbial molehills. It teaches me to have an intimate relationship with everything that surrounds me. It teaches me that all these teachings doesn’t just leap out to grab me. I have to be a receptive, willing, and hard-working student if I am to receive them. I have to be teachable, to let life touch me, to let myself be moved to tears, to let it all reach into me, to immerse myself in the intensity of life. I have to have a “slowing down,” a “stillness,” a “graceful waiting,” a deep diving, and both a listening for and seeing of what is really happening. When I do, a “you can’t help but feel….” invariably comes over me. Then, the garden becomes no place for yawning. It becomes a dazzling varied world. It becomes a gathering of uniqueness. It becomes a place where wonder is awakened and where each day is an awesome “gasping for breath day.” It becomes a place where the senses are alive, the imagination flourishes, the curiosity stirs, and the adventure of life is experienced. It becomes a place of avid exploration of both my outer physical world and of my inner spiritual world. It is a place where both worlds are inseparably and intimately merged into one.

Should it be any different in the classroom? No! Should we think differently of each student than we do of a single galardia bloom? No! Shouldn’t we pay tribute, honor, respect, sanctify, and nourish that uniqueness of each student as we do each bloom? Yes!

And so, I say that the classroom is a garden of life no less than is the garden. It is no less filled with mysteries and enchantments. We have to respect and cherish each of those around us and let each one seep into our senses. If we do, we’re sensitized to deeper realities and sacredness of ourselves and those around us. And, we then must practice, as Hildegard might have said, keeping myself “green in the spirit.” We each must be an ambassador of and an ambassador to each student no less than of each flowering bloom. We must struggle to enter a classroom as if, as Mary Oliver wrote in “The Leaf and the Cloud,” we’re opening the door of a cool temple so I can step in and warmly feel less my isolated and alone self and more a part of everyone.

There is a danger to having such wonder. I warn you that if you let yourself feel this wonder, you will be lost in it. You’ll never get over it. You will have stopped being what I call a “short looker” and “short hearer,” and will irreversibly have become what I call a “long see-er” and “long listener.” No moment will ever be a waste and no moment will ever push you back. Every moment will be a precious gift of opportunity, every moment will be lived. You will have gone beyond your boundardies. Your world will have grown. Your horizons will have broadened. And, unlike a rubber band, none of it will snap back to its original size and form. It will have become the center of your new life. When we see the individual uniqueness of each flower in the garden or each student in the classroom, we will feel a more truthful world of listening, feeling, seeing, and being. Life in general and teaching specifically begins to make so much more sense; the meaning and purpose comes into the focus without asking, the excitement and enthusiasm swells up, fears melt away, and the doubt dries up.

If, however, we submerge the uniqueness of flowers and students in a pool of stereotypes, categories, classifications, labels, charts, and statistics, if I make them into something they are not, their uniqueness is destroyed; they blur into each other; their glory quiets; their beauty fades. Our no end to “wonder days” will come to an end. The music will be drowned out by increasing static. The lively dance step will stiffen. The blythe aire will become a dirge. Newness will mold with routine and grow stale. Difference will yield to indifference, excitement to listlessness, connection to disconnection, caring into an uncaring “who cares.” The spry warmth will cool down to a stiffening chill. The meaningful will wilt into meaningless. The bland monotony will shut down the heart and soul and spirit and mind. Everything will be out of focus and everything will be miniaturized and diminished. Everything will lose is spicy taste.

There will be no feasts of epiphanies, no appetizers of delectable delights, no entrees of astonishments, no deserts of rejoicing wonders. We will not stumble across the subtle blessings in the classroom and the exquiste miracles that occur, and they will go unnoitced. We will not pause and stand rapt in awe. We will not sing and dance in celebration for each student. Our spirit will go unrefreshed. We will not whistle while we work. We will only yawn, and things will grow old and lifeless–quickly. We will, then, as Einstein said, be good as dead.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

I was driving home late last Saturday night on I-75. No one to talk with. Susan literally had fallen into a deep sleep before we got out of the hotel parking lot. Thank goodness for our energy drinks and some stirring words I heard at a business meeting in Ocala. Something someone said kept churning inside and keeping me from being mesmerized by the boring ribbon of concrete and the hypnotic rhythm of the approaching headlights. My mind was racing as fast as the car. Try I struggled to figure out what it was, I couldn’t put my finger on it. It didn’t begin to become apparent until I was almost on the exit ramp at Valdosta. It was still too vague. Then, it hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday afternoon as I had coffee with some colleagues whom I deeply admire. And, an obituary written by Richard Cohen into today’s WASHINGTON POST, made it all so crystal clear.

We all want to succeed. We all want to get that appointment; we all want to get that promotion; we all want to get that tenure; we all want to get that research grant; we all want to get that raise; we all want to get that publication; we all want to get that recognition; we all want to get that reputation; we all want to get that …..

We all want to live well; we all want to do well. But, if we don’t do good as well, well, what good is all that living and doing well? I have found that all that getting and all that living well and all that doing well, will never be good enough. Doing well puts the focus on our ambition, on our self-interest, on the confines of the classroom, on the limits of the subject matter, and on making a living. And, if we’re not careful, doing well can make us into what I call “short lookers” and “short hearers.”

These colleagues are intent on doing good–truly doing good. They know that doing good focuses our vision beyond ourselves, on the needs and interests of others, beyond the boundaries of classroom and subject, and on having a good life. They may not put it into these words, but they know that doing good can make us into what I call “long see-ers” and “long listeners.”

By coincidence, sometimes you don’t ask, Richard Cohen’s obituary column of his father appeared in today’s WASHINGTON POST. I copied bits and pieces of it. He wrote about his father, “He was the most ordinary of men–but God, I have known few like him and neither have you….he was a good man. Not once–not ever–did I know him to cheat: not in business, not on his wife, not on his friends and never on his children….The great men I have spent a lifetime around–the politicians, the statesmen, the rich, the powerful, the creative–can make no such claim. They always say they had to break some eggs to make their omelet. My father made no omelet. But he broke no eggs, either….He had his dreams, but the overriding one was to lead an honorable life….He did not set standards, he lived them….He was, I tell you, the most extraordinary of ordinary men, what in Yiddish is called a ‘mensch’—not a great man but, much rarer still, a good one. There is nothing greater.”

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Something happened to me in a local restaurant a while back that I thought about again as I read a piece by Martin Seligman on making “a gratitude visit” to connect with a person who has been kind to us and done well by us. Without fanfare, drum rolls, medals, awards, or parades, he said, we just ought to acknowledge with some simple words of appreciation those teachers who taught us something greater than and beyond themselves, and something far more important and lasting than any information and momentary grade. He urged the reader never to underestimate the power of an expressed appreciation. I know. I had such an unexpected visitation in, of all unexpected places, that restaurant.

Susan and I were with some close friends. As we were about to order, five students walked by us. Two of them, who were from semesters past, saw me and stopped by our table to chat. Their words of gratitude lasted for a few proverbial seconds; their impact will last a lot longer.

I vividly remember, one of them, Cindy (not her real name) saying, “Dr. Schmier, I’ve never told you this, I am so grateful to you. I don’t know if you remember the day when we were getting ready to present our Bruce Springsteen project I was almost shaking with fear knowing I’d make an ass out of myself and freeze up in front of everyone the second I’d try to sing even though I sang when we did our community building exercises at the beginning of the semester. Our community was sitting in front of you. I guess you saw me starting to have a panic attack and all you did was to lean over and just touched my shoulder ever so gently. I felt so calmed down and I went up and when I looked at you, you winked at me with such a big ‘I know you can do it” smile. And then, when we finished, I looked over and saw a small thumbs up and a smile. I want you to know that I don’t know what it was, but I haven’t been the same since. Every time I think something is going to get me, I think of that soft touch that told me I could do it and I kick ass. And, I haven’t let nothing or no one stop me since then. I just want to know that.”

I answered with only a quiet and humble, “Thank you.” And then I unintentionally blurted out, “And thank Ms Trombly.”

The students looked at me with a puzzled “Who is Ms Trombly” stare.

I answered with a non-chalant wave of my fingers, “Never mind. Just someone I thought of.”

After the students left for their table, my friends wanted to know what that was all about. I told them “they’re what I mean when I say, ‘I teach students.'” I went on and explained that those students reminded me of how Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts cartoon, liked to ask people to name the last few winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize, Heisman trophy, and even of the Academy Award for acting. Few people could come up with many names. Yet, when he would ask people to name teachers, friends and others who helped them through difficult times, to list people who made them feel appreciated and special, and recall a few people who inspired and encouraged them, almost all the people came up with a host of names. His point was that even enormous achievements like winning prestigious awards seldom leave a lasting mark on individuals. The people who make a lasting difference are those who touch our lives in a meaningful way by caring, loving, believing in, having faith in, seeing, listening, supporting, encouraging, helping, and inspiring.

Sidney, a retired businessman man, replied, that it is the same in business. “No one would listen to me if all I said was, ‘I know. Trust me. Do as I say.’ I first have to respect them and show them that I cared about them and their needs and earn their trust before they would do business with me.” He went on to say that it wasn’t what you knew or did that counted as much as it was what kind of person you were. Then he asked me, “Who is Ms Trombly?”

“Oh, she was just a typing and shorthand teacher in high school more than forty-five years ago whom I didn’t appreciate at the time,” I nonchalantly told him. And, then, we ordered dinner.

“Just a typing and shorthand teacher.” Ms. Trombly was more than that. The day after that incident in the restaurant, Cindy sent me an e-mail repeating what she had said in the restaurant and adding that she didn’t want to mention in front of strangers that the “words for the day” that I wrote on the blackboard “really hit home every day.” I had given her the courage to kick out her abusive boyfriend “who you helped me to have the courage to see was no friend of mine and was destroying me in and out of school.”

“I didn’t give you any courage,” I softly answered. “You did it. If I did anything, it was to help you see your own value and find your own strength and courage. I merely helped you make room for a new joy in yourself to replace the paralyzing pain. It was you who made your life take a powerful turn for the better.”

Cindy had ended her message with a questioning “Who is Ms. Trombly?”

I told her.

Because of Cindy, Ms. Trombly has been an apparition haunting me once again. It’s a pleasant presence. So, once again, heeding Martin Seligman, I am making another public gratitude visit to Ms. Trombly.

A little over a decade ago, I wrote about Ms Trombly. Everyone treated her as a cellophane “nobody” high school secretarial arts teacher: you walked right by her; you never noticed her; you saw right through her; you never knew she was there; you treated her as unimpressive, invisible, undistinguished, and inconsequential. When we teenagers did notice her, it was simply to make her an object of ridicule. And yet, in the face of subtle and not so subtle derision and shunning, she never thought of herself or acted as as a cellophane person. She maintained a “somebody” stature that I remember noticing but didn’t think much about at the time.

I had entered her class thinking I couldn’t learn much from a “snap” course on shorthand and typing that I was taking just to get some easy class credits. I wasn’t serious about typing and shorthand; she was serious about each of us. I and my classmates poked fun at her own one or two page “words for the day” that she handed out for us to copy over and over as we practiced our typing. There were her provoking statements about character and values that she dictated during our shorthand sessions. And, there were her selections from the great works of literature, philosophy, and religion that we used to practice both our typing and shorthand. I left that course thinking it was such a waste, and thinking everything she did beyond teaching us typing and shorthand was so hokey. But, during the past thirteen years since my epiphany, the more I looked back, the more I saw her, the more I heard her, and the more I saw so much more stuck than merely shorthand or typing. She was more like the last verse of “Cellophane Man:”

So when you pass someone plain on the stair don’t look right through him as though he wasn’t there he might be the best person you’ve ever met and the more you offer the more you will get

Ain’t that the truth!. She might have been the best teacher I ever had as a model for being a teacher. As I picture roundish, diminutive her once again, peering over her reading glasses that sat half-way down her nose, her hair pulled tight into an out-of-style matronly bun, as I hear and see her once again preparing us as much for life as for a life of typing and taking shorthand, once again she is teaching me with her words and demeanor:

you should pursue your profession honorably and take pride in what you do no matter what anyone thinks or whether anyone notices;

it takes a lot of effort to make your efforts count for something that’s meaningful;

if you work to avoid discomfort and inconvenience and challenge, you will make things more uncomfortable, inconvenient and challenging for yourself;

only love and service can lead to a meaningful and worthwhile career;

as you pursue your career you must thrive rather than merely survive;

you must make every day into a day of “enthusiastic and generous joy” day;

you must make every day into a “make a difference” day;

you must make every day into an “opportunity to grow and develop” day;

you should step forward to teach and live this day for everything its worth in the unconditional service of each student;

instead of going in search of your passion, you must put your passion into everything you do;

true and lasting happiness in your teaching is a cause that flows out from you, not a result that flows into you;

instead of searching endlessly for that elusive right job, right moment, right place or right circumstance, you must give it everything you have right now the right way in this place;

you only experience the fulfillment of what you are doing the second you stop looking for it and start living it;

the moment you give up the fear, let go of the doubt, surrender the insecurity, stop hoarding the negatives, the joy and fulfillment will emerge;

the only difference between can’t and can, between impossible and possible is largely your belief and faith in yourself.

And finally, I eventually learned that everything I see and feel and do has everything to do with how I see and feel about myself. Marcus Aurelius was right: where life is possible, a right life is possible–even in a typing and shorthand high school class.

And so, here is my regrettably all too late gratitude visit:

To you, Ms Trombly, wherever you are, I raise my glass
with a deepest and most sincere ‘thank you.’ Remember
how You once read to us that there are seven wonders
in the world? At first, we all thought you were going
to talk just about ancient pyramids or lighthouses or
colossal statues or hanging gardens. You weren’t. You
were talking about seven wonders more universal, more
wondrous, and more lasting. However amazing and monumental
the ancient structures may have been, those mountainous
things couldn’t move mountains; they couldn’t change lives.
The wonders you were talking about could and do. The
wonders you were talking about are the ones you lived:
a soft smile, a kind word, a listening ear, a reassuring
compliment, a small act of caring, a slight touch of
encouragement, an quick glance of love. My world is better
now because you had passed through my life briefly almost
forty-six years ago planting the seeds of those wonders in
me waiting to be nourished and grow without me knowing it.
I am a better person because you saw me as I didn’t or even
dared to. I am a better teacher as a result of your existence.
I’m sorry it just took me four decades for me to begin to
realize why you have lingered in my mind and why memories of
all those other teachers never have really meant much to me.
I wish you were here to hear me. Maybe you are.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–