The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier

2:45 a. m. Can’t sleep. Nothing is working. Slight headache. So, I may as share what’s been on my heart and mind these last couple of days. All weekend I couldn’t stop thinking about a certain young lady I met. Even the NFL playoffs and my beloved UNC’s squeaky victory over FSU weren’t much of a distraction. It happened Saturday morning. I still can’t believe what happened. It was one of those “in the strangest places” moments. I went out late in the early morning. It was about 5:30 a.m. It was warm, foggy, overcast, and gray. My walk started out gloriously. I got myself up to power walking the first mile of my five mile route. I was about to discover, however, how even more mysteriously glorious that walk was going to become.

As I was briskly moving down Oak Street., a pickup truck stopped next to me. I heard a stammering “Excuse me.” I stopped and turned. Leaning out of the truck’s cab was a non-traditional young lady. Her face was taut and her eyes were swollen and red. Tears were running down her cheeks. I could see her holding the steering wheel for dear life, so tightly her knuckles were a brilliant white.

“You know about this here school?”

“I’m a teacher here.”

“Could you tell me where Powell Hall is?” I gave her directions. “Pray for me,” she said, “I trying to better my life.” She turned her head to look forward. The car didn’t move. After a second or two of silence, she banged the steering wheel with a “Damn, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’ve been cryin’ my eyes out since I left my home knowin’ I’m gonna fail this thing. Maybe I would be best if I just turned this damn thing around and go back to my home and keep on waitressin’ for the rest of lousy life. What’s my daughter gonna think of me wantin’ to quit.”

“Why don’t you pull over,” I suggested calmly.

She looked at me, nodded, turned the steering wheel to her right, slowly crossed two lanes, hopped the curb, and sat there staring straight ahead with her truck half on the curb and half on the street. I slowly crossed the street’s four lanes. Before I could say a word, she turned her head towards me and offered me a tearful “I’m sorry. It’s just I’m so tired of bein’ a loser.” Over the next five minutes I learned her life story: abused as a child, pregnant in high school, kicked out of the house by her “high-and mighty” parents, abandoned by her “dumb-ass boyfriend,” dropped out of high school, got into a series of bad relationships, got her GED ten years later after four tries, fought a serious sickness, now trying to get in VSU to become a nurse “to help others like the angel who nursed me back from death’s door.”

“Sorry, for pukin’ my guts up on you. I don’t know what got over me tellin’ you all this stuff, you being a stranger and all. I hope you don’t mind. You just looked like someone who could listen. You don’t know of such things with all your learning and all them letters trailin’ behind your name.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” I then proceeded to tell her my story: growing up the ignored second son, feeling unloved, a weaken self-esteem, little belief and faith in myself, less self-confidence, overwhelming sense of failure in spite of degrees and scholarly renown, an epiphany at the age of fifty, and a consequent long and continuing inner journey of change and self-discovery.

“Who would have thought. Why you tellin’ me all about yourself?”

“Because anything else I might say would sound like just nice sounding but empty words. You know, that ‘rah, rah’ stuff.”

“Oh, I know all about that ‘rah, rah’ stuff.” You know lots of people have given me that—my preacher, my boss, a friend or two–but, you’re right, it all seemed unreal and like they didn’t really understand. It was just words to them and me. They just used high soundin’ words they felt was expected of them to say. They never felt them. They never showed me that you can use those words. But, you showed me what you’ve been through and that changing can be done. Maybe if you done got passed your stuff and got to where you are, I can too.”

“No maybe about it.”

“But,” as she was talking to herself, “what if I don’t pass this here test?”

“What did you do when you failed the tests for the GED the first time?”

“I worked some more and took it again. I wasn’t let nothin’ stopping me. It was the beginning of the way to get me and especially my daughter out from being stuck and on the right road. I seen what happens to others if they stay where they was.”

“So? You going to let this stop you?”

“No. Guess not. I gotta stay on that road. I guess if I don’t do well I’ll just have take it again until I do.”

‘You know, you said you were a loser. Let me tell you something. I don’t see a loser. A loser wouldn’t have gotten a GED. A loser wouldn’t be caring about her daughter. A loser wouldn’t be here in this truck heading to take a test to get into the university to become a nurse to help others.”

“I thank you for that, but do you really think I have it in me to change my ways?”

“You already have started changing your ways.”

“I have?”

“Sure. You didn’t just stand around feeling sorry about yourself all these years. You didn’t just wish about ’some day;’ you started making that ’some day’ a today. You got a job, became good at it, took care of your daughter, got your GED, got away from bad relationships. You’re still not satisfied with having done all that. You know there is more and you want it. Now you’re reaching for a college education to become a professional. If deep down if you didn’t believe in yourself, if you didn’t have the determination to change your life, if you didn’t think it was important for both your and your daughter’s sake, you wouldn’t be here. Lady, you’re a winner in my book and you have an inner strength you still don’t see.”

“Then, why have I wasted so much of my life?’

“Maybe it wasn’t wasted. Maybe you just had to warm up for this time. Maybe you had to go through what you went through for this to mean something, to really mean something. Now it’s your time. Take it.”

“But, it’s so hard. And, I’m so scared.”

“Was getting a GED hard?”

“While raisin’ a youngin’ and workin’? You don’t know the half of it. I was scared out of my wits after I messed up the first time. More so after the second and third time.”

“But, you didn’t let anything stop you. You a good waitress?”

“Best there is,” she proudly replied with the first smile I saw. “And, my regulars think highly of me.”

“Were you ‘best there is’ when you first began waitressing?”

“Honey,” she giggled, “I couldn’t balance a cup of coffee on a tray without spilling half of it and mixed up more orders than you can count. I was scared I’d be kicked out the door those first days. And, would have if my boss wasn’t an understanding man. It was hard at first, but I kept……” She stopped, thought for a minute, smiled slightly. “I think I’m seeing your point.”

We talked some more. I don’t know how long I was standing by her truck, but it wasn’t a short while. Good thing there was no traffic at that time of a Saturday morning.

“I want to thank you for taking all this time from your exercise to help me. Why’d you do it? You don’t know me from Adam.”

“I told you. I’m a teacher. Let me know how things turn out and if I can help you around here in any way after you get admitted.”

“I don’t have anything to write down your name.”

“Just ask around about the professor who power walks early in the morning. You’ll find me.”

“Will you know who I am? You got nothin’ to write my name down.”

“Just say you’re the young lady in the red truck. I’ll know. Now go relax and kick some butt.”

“I will.”

With that, she turned the ignition and drove off with a slight screech of the tires. Feeling like I had just lived the first scenes of EDUCATING RITA, while I stood there stunned, saying to myself, “What the hell just happened?”

I spent the rest of my walk and a good part of this weekend trying to answer that question. I’m not sure I have a handle on it yet.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Just came in. It’s a chilly “brrrrrrrry,” 31 degree, overcast morning out there. No colorful streaks of dawn. The skies are woolen gray. The air has a light smothering, ashen hue. There’s a gray feeling that the color has been sapped out from everything. And as I started working to get back to my pre-op power walking distance, I thought about gray. Poor gray. Who would lift a toasting glass to gray? Few I know. Who would think to get up in the morning, brew a pot of delicious coffee, step outside, take a deep breath, walk five miles, sit down with a hot cup, and feel “God, it’s a bright, beautiful gray day?” Probably not many. I will after this morning. In fact, when you enter that classroom you might consider proclaiming “What a magnificent gray class.” Use a monotonous color associated with the doldrums and blahs to describe that glorious gathering of those whom I call “sacred ones?” You bet!.

Poor gray. It gets a bum rap it doesn’t really deserve. I say this because for some reason a piece in the Washington Post a few weeks ago by Phillip Kennicott has been tugging on my mind. In it he was down on gray. He wrote about the drabness of winter’s gray, accentuated by the fact that it follows the celebrating colors of the holiday season. He was down on the color gray calling it a dulling color like “pewter gray” and a corrupting color like “blue gray.” In one sense he’s right. After all, does anyone remember ever having seen gray Christmas lights adorning homes, trees, or malls?

But, I think he’s done a disservice to such a deserving color. You see, when it comes to teaching I like gray. I find nothing tedious or ordinary about it. In the classroom is it the most colorful of colors; it is the most dynamic; the most precise; the most challenging; the most lively; the most invigorating. No, gray in the classroom is not a “neither-here-nor-there-color;” it’s an “on-the-mark” color; it’s a “full-of-life” color; it’s the purest of colors. It’s the color closest to the reality of real life. It’s a “keeping-you-on-your-toes” color. It’s an awareness color. But if you don’t like gray, you’ve forsaken most of who and what is in the classroom; you’ve bleached out all that is colorful; you’ve erased names; you’ve blurred faces; you’ve made for uniformity, conformity, and monotony.

Why? Gray is a gray area color. Gray is a nuance color, a color of complexity and complications. It a defying defining color. It’s a stereotype-buster color that spotlights the individual. It finds the holes in the statistical averages. It is, therefore, for me a poetic color. It’s the color of the extraordinary. It’s a color of the subtle; it’s a color of the sublime. It’s the color of the valuable. It’s has such a bright side to it that I almost have to wear sunglasses. None of that simplistic, over simplistic, distorting, unreal, flattening, life-leeching, herding, stereotyping, faceless, nameless, cut-and-dry, and black-and-white stuff with gray. With gray you can’t mindlessly categorize and label into distorting corrals. You can’t dehumanize the classroom.

That’s why gray is so vibrant. It smartens up education. It’s the color Carl Jung would have referred to when he said you have to put aside your formal theories and intellectual constructs and axioms and statistics and charts when you reach out to touch that miracle called the individual human being. And that is exactly what we do or should be doing: reaching out to touch each individual human being each day in each classroom. You know, many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view. What would it mean, then, if you saw each class as a gathering of separate and sacred ones, if you treated each student with a sense that he or she was of infinite value? I can tell you what I do. As I praise the miraculous-ness of each student, each student appears valuable in my eyes; and, as each student appears to be valuable, I am obligated to treat him or her as a valuable not to be lost. Then, I find that I am more inclined to look each student in the eye and see a noble, sacred, unique, miraculous human being, not a student,. The result is that I can’t help but treat him or her with the infinite respect and concern to which he or she is entitled. After all, isn’t that how each of us wants to be treated? Why should we be any different when we treat each student?

I like gray, then, because when it comes to students and teaching in academia, there so often deafness to Jung’s warning; there’s a consequent laziness of ideas, a susceptibility to simplified explanations, and a playing of a numbers game. This stereotyping is always and totally unethical and immoral because it lying. Not every person is guilty of the charge that’s leveled or of the perception imposed. No, its gray that inoculates each person in that classroom with the life that stereotypes and classifications and categorizations had sucked out. It’s gray that tells us that the life of the classroom is an intricately woven carpet with many different colored and differently layered threads brought together in different patterns. And while we have to reduce this complexity to manageable proportions for the sake of conversation, the tendency is too often to over-simplify and consequently to distort, and, then, to refer to that distortion as if it is absolute truth. The result is that we unfairly don’t deal with the whole person; we judge, assess, and rely exclusively on one or two things; we see selectively because, once again, many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view. We see a GPA, a test grade, an SAT score, an award, a recognition, skin color, special needs, clothing, tattooing, body piercing, accent, gender, sexual orientation, etc, etc, etc. We academics see each other no differently. It’s akin to appraising a diamond by merely looking at one facet or designing a house with only one or two walls or reviewing a book after reading only a few pages. There result is that we lose the sense of the sublime and subtle, we’re blind to the totality and wholeness of the person, and we, therefore, reduce real people–as well as ourselves–to inert abstractions and staid statistics and lifeless constructs.

That’s the real dumbing down in education.

So, here’s to enlivening gray. I think I’ll e-mail Kenny and give him “gray” as another word for my Dictionary of Good Teaching.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

A cheerful and belated Happy New Year to each and all. Just got back from two weeks of grandbaby spoiling in San Mateo. Susan and I didn’t light up with the hats, horn, confetti, and all-night bacchanalian rites on New Year’s Eve. We tipped our cup of kindness with a quiet kiss and hug of intoxicating gratefulness and good cheer, and then hit the sack. Didn’t make it to the dropping of the ball this year. At least, not the one that dropped on the West Coast.

It’s been a little over a month since my hernia operation. I didn’t realize how quick it would take me to get back to a brisk five mile walk. Power walking that distance can only be a couple of months behind. As I slid up and down the Himalayan hills of San Mateo, seeing the new year’s first sun slowly coming up from behind the ridge of hills, watching the darken sky transform into shades of gray and then being veined by roses and purples and oranges, watching the twinkling world go out of view and watching our world come into view, I thought, like Louis Armstrong, “what a wonderful world.” I have been cancer free for almost a year. And although this hernia operation at the beginning of December, which was the result of last January’s prostatectomy, has slowed me down for a while, I felt a glorious privilege to be here, to have the “Big C” of the cancer word replaced by the bigger “Big C” of the cure word and cancer-free word, to be alive, to know, to touch, to feel, to act, to listen, to see, and to love. And, to do all these things sincerely, deeply, freely, appreciatively, simply, and especially cheerfully. That’s what was on my mind that fresh morning of a fresh month of a fresh year: cheerfulness.

. We just came out of the season to be jolly. Some would say that the celebrating and feasting and present giving of Ramadan, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas, Kwaansa, and New Year’s is now replaced by the migraine of winter. Others would say that the mirth of late November and December now becomes the murk of January, the ice of February, the wind of March, and the whims of April.. Still others would say that after all the harking angels and decking halls and spinning dredels and busy sidewalks, it’s now a waiting game for the fresh breath of bursting gardens. And still others would say this holiday season is a pausing aberration from the “let’s get back to” real world, daily grind of our personal and professional lives. But, I ask, does it have to be? Isn’t it our choice to decide whether each new day of each new year can be magic. Why can’t each day of the year be our best yet? What is there to stop us from tra-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-ing all year long? I mean there’s a certain vitality to the idea of starting anew; there’s a certain refreshment with the sense of promise that there can be regeneration ahead of us even though the past is never cauterized; there’s a certain calmness to a cheerful life living in quiet but shared rejoicing and gratitude; there’s a certain exhilaration to finding that one something to be cheerful about each day. In fact, I can’t talk enough about cheerfulness. Why? Remember, as Epictetus might say if he were here today, we are disturbed or pleased not by people or things, but by our perception of people and things. And so, it takes just one cheery word or thought or feeling to keep the dark, cold day bright and warm. That means the level of our inner cheerfulness, our inclination to accentuate the positive, will reveal itself and impact on everything you do.

One of the tunes Irving Berlin wrote for picture, White Christmas, has a lyric, “If you’re worried and you can’t sleep; just count your blessings instead of sheep. And you’ll fall asleep counting you’re your blessings.” It is not a cliché. Trust me. I know. When I think of my two sons, their two wonderful wives, my three grandchildren, my Susan, my dear friends, my close colleagues who are like extended family, my sister and her husband (he once was my best friend and college roommate) and their families, Susan’s brother and his family, our brother-in-law and his family, other family members, all the well-wishing students, the differences I’ve made in the lives of others, loving what I do and where I am, when I think of all that and more, my blessings are larger than any flock of black sheep. This past year being cheerful carried me over the rough spots. It brought life-warming sunshine into the cold, dark days and lit up the gloom. It filled my heart with a kind of serenity I’ve seen how it is the best antitoxin for your heart and spirit and mind and body I know that can repel the viral hordes of attacking worries and fears and discouragements and doubts and challenges and difficulties and tribulations that will come my way this coming year.

I feel a poetic line or two coming on:

There is so much around to gladden
that overwhelms what there is to sadden.
You can stop the rain that makes you sad
by just being grateful for the days you’ve had.
Think of the things that come your way
that make you smile each day.
Think of joyous things that can enter your room
that can hurry out all that doom and gloom.
Think of who you are
and of all the things that have taken you this far.
Think of all you can do
to reach out and touch those who are in need of you
So lift a cup of good cheer
And be grateful and happy you’re just here.

Longfellow, eat your heart out!!

I don’t think I am naturally cheerful. I don’t think cheeriness is any more instinctive or spontaneous than is grumpiness. But, it’s not a matter of course, and it isn’t a comfy bed of roses. It’s not simple or easy. It’s a daily choice to hold tight to my cup in the face of those things and people who would consciously or inadvertently wrest it from me and empty it. It’s a struggle with myself, usually subtle, at times out-and-out combat. It’s a test. It’s an obstacle course. It’s a struggle with who I presently am, who I want to be, and with who I can be. I have to seek it out. I have to remind myself or be reminded as I just was by my younger son when I falter. I have to pick myself up. I have to choose. It’s an acquired trait, a habit of the heart, an attitude of the mind. I am cheerful because I choose to be, because I am determined to be cheerful, because each day I want to take life in my arms as tightly and lovingly as I do my angelic Susan, because I believe–no, I know–my cheerfulness is dependent on the inside me and not on the outside others or my circumstances, because I don’t want to be and won’t be pushed around by others and circumstances, because I constantly think cheerful thoughts, because I consciously have cheerful feelings, because I constantly have cheerful conversations with myself, because my motto is “whatever is, is,” because it makes me feel good, because I know it does no good and it doesn’t feel good to be a cynical and gloomy Scrooge. I consciously use those powerful zygomatic major and orbicularis oculi facial muscles to make a smilely on my face, to lift my spirit, to give my heart hopeful and faithful beats, to sparkle my eyes, to keep my soul youthful, and to brighten my mind. I constantly recharge myself with sensual and spiritual pleasure, like the sight of my grandchildren, waking up next to my angelic Susan, talking to the flowers in my garden, taking my pre-dawn meditative walks, talking with personal and professional friends and colleagues, walking into a classroom. And don’t’ think others don’t notice it.

What does this have to do with teaching? Everything. I find that being cheerful makes me a more understanding, forgiving, supportive, encouraging, seeing, listening, faithful, hopeful, and loving me. It gives me a power of endurance and tolerance. It lets me do things with more confidence. It gives me an inner moral and mental and spiritual strength over life’s difficulties. It gives me a strong, happy heart that in the long run is almost impossible to weaken and dishearten. Think about it. Somewhere, somehow, at some time, some teacher’s cheer has touched and changed your life. Think about that someone and you know the power of cheer to reach beyond itself. Think about it and you know the humbling impact of cheer to find something greater than yourself. Think about it and you will remember that it is a force that cannot be ignored. Think about it and you’ll see that when cheer appears, it takes on a life of its own. It can penetrate into the farthest of corners; it can lighten up the darkest of places; it can lift up the heaviest of hearts; it can melt the hardest of attitudes.

I would be remiss, then, not to offer my cheeriness as a gift and not to use it as a teaching and learning method. Cheeriness unshared is like a candle unlit. So, this year I resolve to choose to light that candle daily, to give a smile and good cheer as my every day gift to myself and those around me. I’m not sure I could do otherwise and hold it back any more than I could hold back the wind or the tide. Yeah, I know all about New Year’s resolutions. We vow with all sincerity to do better and adopt habits that will make us healthier and wiser. The bad news about resolutions is that the lottery ticket pays off more than most resolutions. The early weeks of January are littered with broken promises and shelved plans. Maybe that’s because such resolutions are usually all about ourselves. The good news is that the resolutions carried out, especially the ones that involve serving others as well as ourselves, pay off more than the lottery tickets. Take the resolution to be cock-eyed cheerful. Cheerfulness is contagious. I am positive that when I choose to be positive and cheery, I feel positive and cheery. And when I feel positive and cheery, people around me have a better chance of being cheery. Cheery people, colleagues or students, will have a better chance of feeling happier, more hopeful, more confident, more positive, and more encouraged. Being cheerful is one of the most sincere, meaningful, kindly, and valuable gifts I can give to myself and others. My cheer is far more valuable than anything that could be wrapped up in a brightly colored box and place under a Christmas tree or near a Chanukah menorah. Mark Twain once said that the best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. I will add that when you make the world a cheerier place for others, when you bring sunshine into the lives of others, you have the good fortune of living in that world too and basking in that same sunlight.

So, will you join me this year to be cheerful each day, however difficult it may be, to find something each day to be cheerful about, to find someone to celebrate about? If you do, so will others around you and they will give it to you in return. To have a cheery mind and heart and spirit is a great teaching tool.

Have a Happy New Year, a cheerful heart, a smiley face, and each day….

Make it a good day.

–Louis–
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