CHINA DIARY, OURSELVES

Diary, tonight, Wednesday, May 26, I’m diving deep, real deep, spiritually and emotionally deep, so deep most people can’t or won’t dive there with me.  A few mornings ago I cut out a Buddhist saying from the “approved” English language newspaper, China Daily, of all places.  Buddhism is one of the five “permitted” religions–no 1st amendment here– in what so many Americans think is atheistic, communist China!  How about that!  Talk about attacking stereotypes!  Anyway, it said, “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”  That got me to thinking about some “I can’t” and “I’m not” self-depreciating stuff I had heard a few students talking about as I inadvertently eased dropped while passing an open hallway door.  It reminded me of many a “It’s not me,” “I couldn’t do that,” or “I’m not” negatives that I’ve heard many an academic utter and stutter.

In our Judaeo-Christian tradition, like in Buddhism, we are taught the “do unto others” golden rule, the last part of which tells us just what it is we are to do unto.  We are told that the ultimate way to treat others is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  As we love ourselves!!  But, we are taught to so focus on the “neighbor” stuff that we so ignore the “ourselves” stuff.  In fact, the “ourselves” stuff makes so many of us uncomfortable when we do that for ourselves or see others doing it for themselves.  And if we do, we often come under attack.  We’re told that to talk about ourselves is egotistical in the worse kind of way: impertinent, arrogant, self-righteousness, haughty, and so on.  In the halls of ivy, we’re made to think, as someone once told me, that personal reflection and recognizing a need for personal or professional change is a sign of incompetence and weakness.  We, especially academics, are convinced We’ve got it, we’ve made it, we’ve arrived, or, even worse, there is nothing we need do about our situation.  Grammatically, we embody “living periods” and “living exclamation points.”   And so, many of us don’t step back and think of ourselves.  We fail the test of courage to become “living question marks,” to stare at what are uncomfortable, maybe painful, thoughts and feelings.  And, it often creates something of an emotional and intellectual laziness, even a feebleness, and a lot of defensive anxiety.

Yet, that golden rule of love is an I/you communal, holistic concept of serious obligation based on the mutual respect and equality of ourselves and others.  It says we have to turn inward if we are to do the right things outward.  Of course, it’s easier and safer to see faults in others than in ourselves; it’s safer to blame than to assume responsibility.   I mean, diary, if we don’t love ourselves, how can we love others?  If we don’t truly love what we’re doing, how can love doing it to and with others?  We can’t give what we don’t have to give.  We can’t understand others when we don’t understand ourselves.  We can’t tell others to be authentic when we hide behind masks, costumes, titles, and positions.  Yet, we don’t often think about the way we talk to and treat ourselves.  Lots of us don’t’ like that kind of reflective and meditative self-conversation.  It requires demanding and challenging honesty and authenticity.  It’s downright risky.

Diary, I understand all this.  Not just because of having been a target of these assaults as I travel on my inner journey, but I can tell you vividly before my epiphany about the time, effort, and energy it takes to build and maintain walls.  I can tell you that walls you think hide and protect really imprison and enslave.  Bastions that make you think make you feel safe and at ease actually create an insecure and uneasy siege mentality.  I also can tell  you how scary it is when you realize how you’ve held yourself captive.  I can tell you what it takes to break down those walls.  At the same time, I’ll tell you what I also discovered:  life and the level at which I live is a matter of choice; I choose how to feel, think about, and react to anything that comes my way; I will find peace not by trying to escape my problems, but by confronting them courageously; I will find peace not in denial, but in acknowledging.  It’s true, the truth does make you calm and free. Authenticity takes away the strain to hide and the pressure to keep the doors closed and to maintain fronts.  Honesty allows me to devote my time and energy to productive ends.  Openness allows me to live a life of integrity.  Inner strength is the true protective armor against the slings and arrows hurled at me.

So, if we follow the biblical directive, loving ourselves opens us to ourselves and others; being self-righteous means we feel we are worthy.  As we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others becomes larger.  Ego is bad only if goes, like anything else, to the extreme, and disconnects and closes us off from ourselves and others.  There is good ego.  I mean that nurturing of our self-esteem and self-confidence, as well as our sense of self-meaning and purpose, is part of how we express ourselves; it is how we get to the point that our purpose is to help nurture ourselves so that we can help others nurture themselves.  I mean with someone we don’t know well or at all, we are careful to control the way we look at, much less see, them, the way we speak to or around them, and to really hear, much less listen to, what they are saying.  And, that someone can be ourselves.

Through private and public sharing self-talk, through a “what do you want to know about me” exercise at the beginning of each semester in class with the students, I find it easier to be authentic, to be honest, to connect, to see, to listen to, to speak with,  and to express genuine love, empathy, and compassion for others.  We often feel that we don’t “deserve” to nurture ourselves; we’re afraid to reflect; and, we depreciate self-talk.  So, it’s understandable that we would have challenges talking to students like they’re someone we love when we have challenges talking honestly to ourselves like we’re someone we love.  But, as Ghandi said, if we want change, we should start with ourselves; we should become the value we wish to have; we should become the positive difference we’d like to see in the world.  We humans are great, he said, not because we can remake the world, but because we can remake ourselves.  As we can do that openly, we model for the students and give permission to them to do the same.  What Buddha and the golden rule are asking of us is unconditionally engaging, daring, respecting, disciplined, rigorous–and glorious.  Told you, diary, I was scuba diving into the spiritual depths tonight.

MORE ON HAPPINESS

I was pulled away from my “China Diary” by a “help me” e-mail from a student whom I’ll call Joan.  She told me she’s having a problem with being happy, with concentrating, and with doing her work.  “And,” she added, “since you’re always happy and smiling, please give me some of your pearls of wisdom and tell me how to be happy again, or at least help make me happy for the rest of the term.”  I knew something had happen over the past weeks.  She had been smiling less and less, and had been on top of things less and less.  Then, she told me that she had surrendered to her parents’ constant insistence that she change her major into a “practical one where I could make a good living.  I didn’t want to, but they told me they would cut me off and stop paying for my education if I didn’t.”  I understand parental concerns, but these are tragically turning their daughter’s dream into a nightmare, her song into a dirge, her dance into a plod, and her flower garden into a bed of weeds.

“I can’t really just tell you to be happy, or make you happy, or even tell you how to be happy.  Only you can do that for you,” I answered her in that way I did because I never give advice.  ‘But,’ I added, “I will ask you four questions for you to answer and maybe help you get on your own way:  Wither goeth thou?  Where is your heart calling you?  Is it calling you elsewhere than in the direction you’re being told to head?  Whom do you feel comfortable becoming?  Until you honestly look in the mirror and answer those questions, and, most importantly, act on the answers, you won’t be happy.”

In the course of our e-mail exchange, I told her, “My epiphany at the age of 50, and then having survived cancer, and then having lived unscathed through a deadly cerebral hemorrhage which by all rights I should not have survived took me and still take me on a journey of self-understanding where I came and come into contact with my ever-changing ‘myself.’  You know what they have taught me over these past twenty years?  It’s that everyone dies, but not everyone lives. So, I have become too busy living to worry about retiring or dying.  Sounds trite, doesn’t it.  But, it’s not.  Sure, you’ll graduate with a degree, will become a professional, earn a good living, raise a family, and you might get renown.  But deep down where it counts will you be living?  Will you be truly alive?  I think you know the answer.  If you don’t, why ask me to help you to be happy.”

“I, for one, have learned that you won’t really be happy if you’re not doing what you love and love what you’re doing.  You’ll be unhappy because you won’t be you; you won’t be who you want to be.  I see it all the time among students, faculty, friends, and a host of people.  Twenty years ago, I had seen it in me.  Now, my idea now is to pack life into the years I have by living each day my resilient ‘Six Rs’:  rest, reflect, resolve, resilient, renew, restore.  This is how I do it, how I live each day, how I decide to be happy each day, and what I have learned about being happy–and none of which ever comes fast and easy.  What I do is to work out in an emotional and spiritual gym.  I have a daily routine of exercising my heart, soul, and mind, as well as my body.  That’s the cure to becoming emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually flabby.  Each day I admit that my happiness is within me as it is within each of us.  Each day I assume the responsibility to be happy and never blame anyone for ‘making me…..’  So, I choose each day to be a prospector of my inner gold of happiness.  I have bunches of tools to mine for it.  Among them are my reflective pre-dawn walks, my conversation with my flowers, my glass of wine with my Susan, having a sense of purpose in my teaching, living my ‘now’ with an intense ‘otherness’ and ‘awareness,’  living my uplifting, daily ‘word for the day,’ having a meaning in whatever I do, and just having a wonder and gratitude and appreciaton of it all.”

“You see, Joan, you, I, each of us, have the ability to look for happiness, find it, see it, use it, and appreciate it.  I now understand that we each in reality, no matter what anyone else says or does, transcend every label anyone can put on each of us.  Old, young, student, professor, rich, poor, male, female, blonde, full size, white, American, Chinese are all outer appearances.  It’s inside that we each are a one-of-a-kind masterpiece of life itself.  So, I decide to live!  I care for living!  I follow my heart, listen to my passion, set my brain on fire, keep moving, experiment, take chances,  go to the edge, keep my senses on full alert, and live on that precipice.  Every waking moment of every day, I set out to accomplish things and make a difference in the world.  I refuse to get stuck in stuck gear.  I refuse to be in neutral gear.  I won’t shift into reverse gear.  I won’t fall into ruts cut by someone else’s wheels.  I don’t sit on sills wishing on ‘some day.’  I don’t wear blinders that impose a barrel vision which blots out most of the richness and abundance of all that is around me.  I live this day.  I don’t live on the outside while being dead on the inside.  I don’t live someone else’s dream!  I am me whoever that ‘me’ is today and make sure that “me” is always changing!  I don’t settle!  I don’t sigh.  I don’t do a resigned ‘just!’   I don’t spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, or physically atrophy!  I don’t do a muffled, out-of-tune ‘chug-a-chug-a-chug.’  No, I do a reved-up ‘vrrrrroooooommmmmm!!!!!!!!’   Each day I make it happen!  I put momentum on my side!  I keep the moss off my stone and the grass from growing under my feet.  I decide to live my life!  I dance.  I sing.  I see light in the darkness. I light my candle!  I see light in the darkness.  I keep the faith!  I keep hope burning!  I keep loving.  My daily regimen of emotional, spiritual, and mental exercise make sure that my silence quiets the noise, my passion is stronger than any doubts, that my values  join my being with my doing with my living, that my spiritual growth connects my ‘heart work’ with my ‘professional work’ with my personal life in a way I live a whole and balanced life rather than a divided and imbalanced one, that my vision keeps me heading true north, that my ‘awareness’ and ‘otherness’ of service to others suppresses hesitations, and that my purpose renders fear insignificant,    And, that’s why I always smile, hug, kiss, laugh, love, dance, sing (admittedly like a crocking frog), and am happy and fulfilled and satisfied and feel I’m doing something significant each day.”

Louis

CHINA DIARY, OURSELVES

Diary, tonight, Wednesday, May 26, I’m diving deep, real deep, spiritually and emotionally deep, so deep most people can’t or won’t dive there with me.  A few mornings ago I cut out a Buddhist saying from the “approved” English language newspaper, China Daily, of all places.  Buddhism is one of the five “permitted” religions–no 1st amendment here– in what so many Americans think is atheistic, communist China!  How about that!  Talk about attacking stereotypes!  Anyway, it said, “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”  That got me to thinking about some “I can’t” and “I’m not” self-depreciating stuff I had heard a few students talking about as I inadvertently eased dropped while passing an open hallway door.  It reminded me of many a “It’s not me,” “I couldn’t do that,” or “I’m not” negatives that I’ve heard many an academic utter and stutter.

In our Judaeo-Christian tradition, like in Buddhism, we are taught the “do unto others” golden rule, the last part of which tells us just what it is we are to do unto.  We are told that the ultimate way to treat others is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  As we love ourselves!!  But, we are taught to so focus on the “neighbor” stuff that we so ignore the “ourselves” stuff.  In fact, the “ourselves” stuff makes so many of us uncomfortable when we do that for ourselves or see others doing it for themselves.  And if we do, we often come under attack.  We’re told that to talk about ourselves is egotistical in the worse kind of way: impertinent, arrogant, self-righteousness, haughty, and so on.  In the halls of ivy, we’re made to think, as someone once told me, that personal reflection and recognizing a need for personal or professional change is a sign of incompetence and weakness.  We, especially academics, are convinced We’ve got it, we’ve made it, we’ve arrived, or, even worse, there is nothing we need do about our situation.  Grammatically, we embody “living periods” and “living exclamation points.”   And so, many of us don’t step back and think of ourselves.  We fail the test of courage to become “living question marks,” to stare at what are uncomfortable, maybe painful, thoughts and feelings.  And, it often creates something of an emotional and intellectual laziness, even a feebleness, and a lot of defensive anxiety.

Yet, that golden rule of love is an I/you communal, holistic concept of serious obligation based on the mutual respect and equality of ourselves and others.  It says we have to turn inward if we are to do the right things outward.  Of course, it’s easier and safer to see faults in others than in ourselves; it’s safer to blame than to assume responsibility.   I mean, diary, if we don’t love ourselves, how can we love others?  If we don’t truly love what we’re doing, how can love doing it to and with others?  We can’t give what we don’t have to give.  We can’t understand others when we don’t understand ourselves.  We can’t tell others to be authentic when we hide behind masks, costumes, titles, and positions.  Yet, we don’t often think about the way we talk to and treat ourselves.  Lots of us don’t’ like that kind of reflective and meditative self-conversation.  It requires demanding and challenging honesty and authenticity.  It’s downright risky.

Diary, I understand all this.  Not just because of having been a target of these assaults as I travel on my inner journey, but I can tell you vividly before my epiphany about the time, effort, and energy it takes to build and maintain walls.  I can tell you that walls you think hide and protect really imprison and enslave.  Bastions that make you think make you feel safe and at ease actually create an insecure and uneasy siege mentality.  I also can tell  you how scary it is when you realize how you’ve held yourself captive.  I can tell you what it takes to break down those walls.  At the same time, I’ll tell you what I also discovered:  life and the level at which I live is a matter of choice; I choose how to feel, think about, and react to anything that comes my way; I will find peace not by trying to escape my problems, but by confronting them courageously; I will find peace not in denial, but in acknowledging.  It’s true, the truth does make you calm and free. Authenticity takes away the strain to hide and the pressure to keep the doors closed and to maintain fronts.  Honesty allows me to devote my time and energy to productive ends.  Openness allows me to live a life of integrity.  Inner strength is the true protective armor against the slings and arrows hurled at me.

So, if we follow the biblical directive, loving ourselves opens us to ourselves and others; being self-righteous means we feel we are worthy.  As we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others becomes larger.  Ego is bad only if goes, like anything else, to the extreme, and disconnects and closes us off from ourselves and others.  There is good ego.  I mean that nurturing of our self-esteem and self-confidence, as well as our sense of self-meaning and purpose, is part of how we express ourselves; it is how we get to the point that our purpose is to help nurture ourselves so that we can help others nurture themselves.  I mean with someone we don’t know well or at all, we are careful to control the way we look at, much less see, them, the way we speak to or around them, and to really hear, much less listen to, what they are saying.  And, that someone can be ourselves.

Through private and public sharing self-talk, through a “what do you want to know about me” exercise at the beginning of each semester in class with the students, I find it easier to be authentic, to be honest, to connect, to see, to listen to, to speak with,  and to express genuine love, empathy, and compassion for others.  We often feel that we don’t “deserve” to nurture ourselves; we’re afraid to reflect; and, we depreciate self-talk.  So, it’s understandable that we would have challenges talking to students like they’re someone we love when we have challenges talking honestly to ourselves like we’re someone we love.  But, as Ghandi said, if we want change, we should start with ourselves; we should become the value we wish to have; we should become the positive difference we’d like to see in the world.  We humans are great, he said, not because we can remake the world, but because we can remake ourselves.  As we can do that openly, we model for the students and give permission to them to do the same.  What Buddha and the golden rule are asking of us is unconditionally engaging, daring, respecting, disciplined, rigorous–and glorious.  Told you, diary, I was scuba diving into the spiritual depths tonight.

Louis

I FEEL SO SEUSS-ISH

I was going back to my “China Diary” until I read a “stopped-in-my-tracks” journal entry this past week from a student I’ll call Sarah:

“I’ve never really had someone  believing in me until your class.  My whole life my parents have always been negative towards me. Anytime I’ve told them what I wanted to go out for in school or what I wanted for my goals in life or what I wanted to do for a living my father ALWAYS had a comment ‘You’re not good enough’ or ‘You’re not gonna be able to do that,’ and my mother would ALWAYS say that ‘You’re not talented enough for this’ or ‘You’re not smart enough for that.’  I never heard a positive and supportive and encouraging word from either of them.  My teachers never encouraged me.  They always said and treated me, even ignored me, like I was just average or plain and mediocre and not worth their time and attention.  I guess I started believing them and acting that way.  Even my boyfriend puts me down, and did it hard like I was nothing.  No, I’ll take that back.  I realize now because of those ‘words for the day’ of yours that you write on the board each day, and our talk about for a few minutes in class, and that “great job” you whispered to me after we sang, that I’m letting him and everyone else put me down, including myself.  No, more anymore.  Like you said, I have capability to be a GHPer [Georgia high school Governor’s Honors Program].  I’m finally realizing that my parents and all of them, and even me, especially me, are so very wrong, and that I can do whatever I want as long as I try my hardest. Oops, I meant DO whatever it takes (‘there is no try’–Yoda is right).  Your class has helped me to open my own eyes to see this because your eyes and heart somehow are on each of us.  I never thought I was creative, but I contributed a lot to the Dr. Seuss book.  I never believed I had any imagination, but I helped write a lot of the the lyric lines to the rap song.  I never thought I could even get up and talk in front of a group of people, yet alone sing! But, I did it!  I did do it!  I did do it!  And, I was more than just okay. I was good and I felt so good and proud of myself afterwards, especially after what you said to me, like I could do anything now.  I’m beginning to see in me what you saw first.  I don’t have to be a shy follower.  I can be a leader, but first as you told me I have to learn to lead myself.  Making learning so much fun, your passion for teaching, your caring for each of us is so strong no matter what, inspires me to chase after my dreams.  I am now starting to believe there is absolutely nothing that can stop me from catching them and making them real.  I’m gonna fight harder than ever to take advantage of anything new that comes my way.  I know it won’t be easy breaking my old habits, but, like you said, I’m going to have to have the courage to think and act ‘baby’ and ‘bicycle.’  And, like you wrote one day on the board, ‘no step on a great journey is small.’  Sculpture project, here I come.  Who said I’m not an artist?  Another step out from my enclosed box.”

So, I’m so excited and expectant about what sculpture they’ll come up with and bring in after our silly Fall Break to teach each other.  It’s put me in such a “Dr. Seuss-ish” mood.  Am I getting ahead of the game?  Should I wait until I see their sculptures?  I don’t think so, not after Sarah’s words.  I’ve heard their songs and read their lyrics; I’ve heard and read their Dr. Seuss books.  Now, as they prepare to sculpt, I’ve read their one page individual issue papers; I’ve read their consensus community issue papers; I’ve read their daily journal entries.  In class, I’ve seen them exchange information, pour over the textbook, talk with each other, read and re-read the project rules, peer at the examples of earlier sculptures, write their issue papers, put their heads together, make sketches, head off to the library, and arrange to go together to buy stuff.  And, to cap it off, was Sarah’s journal entry.  So, in confident expectation, I just wrote a serious Dr. Seuss-like poem, more of an “Ode to Sarah, that raises a lot of questions for so many of us academics about all those Sarahs in our classrooms.  Here goes:

WHEN YOU DARED TO DARE

Do you see?  More than just a wee?

How wrong it is to say, “That’s not me?”

Once you get out of the confusing maize

how much you can amaze?

You took the chance to break down your imprisoning wall

that is not small thing to do at all

Do you see?  More than just a wee?

You have imagination;

And you used it by the ton;

You have imagination

And you had a lot of fun.

You have creativity;

And you used it more than just an itty-bitty;

WHEN….YOU….DARED….TO….DARE

Creativity!  Imagination!

You let them both be found;

You let them both resound!

You gave yourself freedom

You felt your gleedom

WHEN….YOU….DARED….TO….DARE

You see

They’re in you, you know.

You can find them–

You just have to go get ’em.

WHEN….YOU….DARE….TO….DARE

You did it!

you rode high!

you rode up in the sky!

You did soar!

on glorious clouds galore

up there you found magical things;

up there you got on and flew high on your creative wings.

WHEN….YOU….DARED…TO….DARE

You entered a new world

as your confidence unfurled.

You saw new sights

from those soaring fearless heights.

You were brave

and it changed how you behave

You are in new lands

when you just take things into your hands,

WHEN….YOU….DARED….TO….DARE

Oh, yes

You sweared;

you strained;

but you gained

Oh, yes

You sneered;

you veered;

but then you cheered

Oh, yes

You fretted;

you sweated;

but how you did get it

Oh, yes

You did fight it

But you got excited

And how you got delighted

Oh, yes

Now you know

You’re not just so, so

You can go whenever and wherever you want to go

WHEN….YOU….DARE….TO….DARE

Did you see,

your faces lit up with glee

Your hearts felt the delights

at the wonderful sights

WHEN….YOU….DARE….TO….DARE

Each of you out there

Each….of….you!!

Each of you is more than just fair.

Each of you can get there

You silence the Grinch of don’t and won’t and can’t

WHEN….YOU….DARE….TO….DARE

This poem got me to ask a lot of questions I would ask of us academics:

  • Do we really believe students can be trusted to learn on their own?
  • Do we really engage in a control system whose motto is, “If we didn’t, the student wouldn’t.”
  • Do we really allow students to decide, become involved, and get excited?
  • Do we really give students responsibility to decide, to be involved, to question, to think?
  • Do we really believe that grading is what an education is about and education really about grading?
  • Do we really know, really know, who is in the classroom with us?
  • Do we really, really, have an acute awareness and deep of sense of otherness in the classroom?
  • Do we really believe we are in the service of each student?
  • Do we really believe the classroom has a higher calling that the lab or archive?
  • Do we really believe that command and just “do as I say” get better results than persuasion and purpose?
  • Do we really believe that dictated lecture is teaching?
  • Do we really believe that note-taking, test cramming, paper writing, and test taking are what learning is all about?
  • Do we really believe that the student really deeply and lastingly learns what is lectured.
  • Do we really believe that what we cover in a term creates a real “mastery of the subject?”
  • Do we see ourselves as only intellectual and information masons building a wall of knowledge, content brick by content brick by content brick by content brick?
  • Do we really think that standardization encourages the development of individual traits?
  • Do we really think that a grade or GPA, or a graduation, equates to being educated?
  • Do we really think that a grade or GPA or recognition predicts how a student will fare in the future?

Before we answer, I’ve got another series of questions that might give us pause:

  • How do engaged, creative, and imaginative people come from passive learners?
  • How do imaginative and independent problem perceivers evolve from fearful and submissive “what do you want” solvers of our own problems with our own answers?
  • How do manipulated classroom objects come out of the academic cocoon as respected and respectful self-directed individuals?
  • How do memorizers develop into independent thinkers?
  • How do students trained to conform and converge emerge with the courage to diverge?
  • How does imposed conformity encourage individual thought, action, and expression?
  • How do controlled passers of tests and getters of grades metamorphose into independent and adventurous discoverers?
  • How does mere information transmission and stuffing transform into character, values, morality, ethics, principles, and conscience?
  • How does grade getting materialize into kindness, fairness, dignity, respect, and integrity?
  • How does isolated “I don’t want to depend on anyone” morph into a higher sense of service to others, to community and to humanity?

Louis

ON HAPPINESS

Well, I’ve still have what I call a “Lilly hangover.”  I’ve not be able to stop thinking about how sometimes things mysteriously converse.  In this case it was the merging of three separate streams.   First was the Lilly sessions on brain research and learning, and social intelligence by Lou Foltz, Jennifer McCricklerd, Tamara Rosier, and myself which inadvertently plugged into each other.

The second was an end-of-conference Sunday breakfast at the B & B in where Susan and I were staying.  At our table sat a man who had been part of a wedding party that, except for our room, had taken over the B & B.  I’m guessing he was in his early to mid 40s since he mentioned recently attending his 25th business school reunion.  We discovered he was an high level manager in a company that was highly dependent on the viability of the auto industry.  As we talked about the economy, he discovered that I had been attending the Lilly conference and had given a presentation dealing with self-reflection and social intelligence. Then, out of the blue, I guess spurred on by my description of the conference and the series of presentations dealing with social intelligence, he said without any prompting, “Happiness is so important.  It’s actually crucial to productivity and accomplishment.  At our tenth reunion everyone was brashly talking, actually loudly bragging, about how much they were making, what positions they were holding, how fast they were rising in their company.  At our 25th, it was different.  We weren’t as loud.  Maybe it had something to do with the economy or maybe it was our maturity, but we were asking each other quietly, almost secretly, ‘Are you happy, really happy?’  It was like everyone was seeing that the price they were paying for the high salaries and top positions was too high and the sacrifices were too much.  But, they felt caught and couldn’t untangle themselves from what they had gotten themselves into.  They’ve become rising ‘want to please “yes men and women”‘” Then, he quietly and solemnly said, “You know, so few people, only 10% I think, love what they’re is doing and doing what they love.   The numbers say that finding the right job is as difficult as finding the right person to live with.”

As he  continued, his voice faded out as I felt a blessed aura envelop me.  I thought to myself as I looked at Susan how lucky I am:  a ten percent-er in both the professional and personal categories, and a five percent-er who survived a deadly cerebral hemorrhage.  So, I’ll take the personal bliss over the professional accomplishments, that is, the years Susan and I have been married over the years it took to lengthen my resume.  Waking up and going to sleep with Susan at my side, walking hand-in-hand with her, having our daily glass of wine and cheese and talk. always tell me how lucky I am to have had that blind date with her I didn’t want nearly 45 years ago.  My family happiness is far more important in determining my personal well being than is the length my long resume.  It was my Susan, sons, and friends who were there for me when I nearly died of a cerebral hemorrhage.  As I told the audience in my session, not one line from my books or a line on my resume or one line from a Random Thought held my hand while I lay on the brink for a week in neuro-ICU.  Not one Random Thought, not one workshop, not one grant, not one book, not even tenure brings me a sense well-being anywhere approaching Susan’s soft word, warm smile, glowing look, and loving touch.  For me, all that professional “stuff” lies on life’s surface and are shallow rooted; my relationship with Susan, family, and dear friends has a so much deeper tap root and is a heck of lot more important.   Without them, I would never have known what true happiness is, and I’d be living an emotionally and spiritually stunted, truncated life.

And finally, I come to the third stream of this confluence:  the discussion over a proposed set of written, university-wide tenure and promotion criteria, as well as the creation of a University Tenure and Promotion Committee. These past couple of months, they are been at the center of many a discussion among faculty, especially since the open “town meetings” on the matter that are presently being held.   The anxiety, the fear, the mistrust, the suspicion,  the weakened self-confidence, and sometimes the anger that this issue has brought to the surface.  Many of the younger untenured faculty wanted me to speak out on their behalf after I had expressed myself briefly at an A & S meeting.  I professionally and personally don’t really care since I’ve had tenure longer than many of them have walked the earth.  And yet, I cared deeply since after nearly 44 years of my professional life into VSU, this institution is what I helped and literally fought to make it what it is.  And, I discovered how unhappy and balkanized a lot of my colleagues truly are.

Anyway, you know, somewhere I read that academics aren’t the happiest during the years when they’re running in what we call the “publish or perish rat race.”   Lately, I have begun to wonder why.  Is it because they feel a pain of dismemberment that is at the spiritual level?  Is it because they realize at some visceral level that they’re letting the rat race transform them into rats?  Is it because there is no true end to the race?  Is it because in the pursuit of tenure and promotion they’ve lost their way in the pursuit of happiness?   Is it because the pursuit of tenure has deafened and blinded them to students, if not sacrificed students?  Is it because tenure has sunk from the heights of protecting the quest for important truths to merely job guarantee?  Is it because they find themselves in a profession that has taken out the heart of education and they find themselves contributing to a disconnected, distant, competitive, and uncaring relationship with colleagues and students?  It is that so many academics live, in the words of Thoreau, in quiet desperation?

Deeper down, this pain is the spiritual and emotional elephant in the room that an academically ignored or rejected PBS documentary on higher education, Declining By Degrees, had the audacity to take about. The achievement of  tenure brings with it anything but an ecstasy of a dream fulfilled.  In that quest, the brain and adrenal gland are tied more often than not to mere survival.  Getting tenure had become more like a deep, relieving “whew” after running a pummeling gauntlet.  Academia has what Parker Palmer calls a disconnecting “culture of fear.”  So many look through the proverbial “glass darkly.”  So many don’t feel free to be themselves or speak what others may not want to hear.  They succumb to the peer pressure of “what do they want” in their constant quest for tenure and promotion and recognition.  They have let other people make them into the people those others want them to be:  meritcrats.  In that submission, we do unto ourselves what others want to do.  We weaken ourselves by allowing ourselves to be puppets manipulated by outside forces, to wind up with and to be what many don’t want.  So many of us don’t realize that it is so difficult and disheartening to be the person you don’t want to be.  So many will outwardly deny it, but in private, as soon as you hear, “but, I don’t have tenure,” it is otherwise.  You can see it in their eyes.  You can hear it in their voices.  You can read it on their faces. Having run in that race and then having dropped out of it, I think its because they pay so much attention to such wrong things. They vastly overestimate how the acquisition of tenure or the publication or the grant or promotion or position will improve their lives.  True happiness occurs only when you have happiness within you.  Happiness occurs only when you truly have inner peace, love, kindness, and fulfillment.  Happiness occurs when you get a meaning into your life; and, you get that meaning when you are devoted to loving others unconditionally, have a sense of purpose that is higher than yourself, when you’re devoted to something that gives you a true sense of significance, and when in those moments of inner silence you know you have made a difference.

Louis

-Louis-

LOVE OF LEARNING

My god,  I watched and listened in awe:  eyes wide open, mouth dropped, goose bumps, some tears, or even a lump in the throat.  After these past few weeks, I learned that you don’t have to travel the world over to find the beautiful; it’s right there in front of your classroom nose.  The students just finished their “Dr Seuss Project” and the “Song Thing Project.”  In communities, they took the information in, critically thought about it, sifted through it, shuffled it about, took ownership, found purpose and relevance, and it came out in new and interesting ways.  They’re starting, arduously starting, just starting, to learn how to think in different and deeper ways; they’re better able to remember the details because the information is embedded in a meaningful, purposeful, context. That’s called relevance, critical thinking, and creativity.  It’s the stuff of real, deep, and lasting learning.  And, you should have seen it:  the imagination, the creativity, the laughter, the fun, the sense of accomplishment, the wonderment at their creativity, the amazement at their imagination, the surprise at their own abilities and talents.   More important, the learning, the understanding, the insight.  These are people who said they couldn’t write, writing magnificent and insightful verses and lyrics; these people who were afraid to take risks, taking risks; these are people who said they couldn’t do it, doing it; these people who said they weren’t creative, being creative.  Yeah, they complained, they cursed, they grimaced, and they struggled.  Sure, they were confused and they were afraid of being wrong.  But, in the end, most of them, not all, overcame the barriers.  The whole spirit of these past few weeks evolved into an ever reinforcing and proud “Damn, I can do it!”  If I had to, I would take the work of these supposed “average” students and hold it up against anything–anything–coming out from our honors program.  If these students knew how to listen to themselves, as I listen to them, in the stillness of their quiet, they would hear, as I do, the whisper of their minds and hearts slowly giving strength to weakness, energy to lethargy, courage to fear, faith to disbelief, belief to doubts, confidence to self-depreciation, fun to somberness, hope to despair, excellence to mediocrity, can to can’t.  They would see that the teacher and learner are located in the same person.  They would hear that there is nothing “average” or “mediocre” about any of them.

Someone once said that it’s really a mistake to think that the joy of learning can be promoted by threat or that a love of learning can be imposed by coercion or that happiness with learning can be injected with fear.  How true, how true.  And, yet, isn’t that the very hallmark of our educational system:  fear, threat, and coercion.  Joy, love, and especially fun, seem to be taken as the antithesis of seriousness and work.  Do we really understand that we can have serious fun; that the opposite of fun is debilitating boredom, not work?  Do we really understand how difficult it is for students to learn something when they are rushed, threatened, or given failing grades?   How many of us can think clearly, perceive sharply, be creative and imaginative, when we’re rushed, anxious, afraid, or see no purpose to it all?  When we make students afraid to make decisions, to take risks, to have the courage to fail, we stop learning dead in its tracks.  When we demand students mindlessly enslave themselves to a serving up “what do you want,” we stop learning in its tracks.  When we don’t answer the student’s question, “why do I have to do this,” we stop learning in its tracks.

I remember when my sons where kids.  They were so curious.  They were fearless adventurers, almost too bold.  They were questers, asking about all sorts of things at all sorts of times.  They wanted to make sense out of things, out of everything.  They wanted to find out how things work.  They were open, perceptive, and testing.  They did more than merely observe people and things around him.  They were learners and involvers.  Their hands were always on, in, and around.  Their eyes peered.  They climbed up and over.  They crawled into and under.  They patiently played with, touched, tasted, twisted, lifted, bent, and even broke.  They never thought about being afraid to make mistakes.  They tolerated lots of uncertainty, confusion, ignorance.  Sure, they often got frustrated, but they so loved suspense, they kept at it.  They often would wrench away when I offered to help,  It was theirs to find.  And, boy, were they proud when they found it, did it, and got it. Like the Enterprise in Star Trek, they boldly went where they had never been before.

Alas, our k-12 and higher education campuses, with their orgies of tests, scores, quizzes, grades, GPAs, herd-like lecture halls, standardization, credentialing, suck the life, joy, fun, and happiness out of that kind of adventurousness.  They are not places that give all that much time, or opportunity, or recognition for this kind of exploring, thinking, doing, and learning. No, we gotta “cover the material!”  We gotta get “mastery of the subject.”  I guess what gets to me is that if Robert Louis Stevenson was on our campuses he would probably write a story titled ” Dr. Educator and Mr. Academic.” All too often our campuses are populated by an intellectual version of academic commercialism that’s threatens to do, if it hasn’t already done, to education what so many have done to Christmas.  It creates a competition betweeen spirit and “stuff” that takes all the spirit and meaning and purpose out of the stuff.

We are overemphasizing the importance of grades and other measurements; we are overemphasizing content; we are underemphasizing, if not ignoring, the importance of resourcefulness, optimism, people skills, communication skills, a confident can-do attitude, self-esteem, creativity; we devalue vital connectedness.  Talk of good grades if you wish, talk of content is you wish, as long as you balance this by equally talking about, seriously talking about, emotional and social health.  Talk of “cognitive” intelligence is you wish, as long you balance this by equally talking about, seriously talking about, emotional and social intelligence.   Play and fun are critical sources for the joy and love of learning.  Doing exactly what you are told to do is not fun. Memorization by rote is not joy of learning.  Studying merely to take a test and get a grade is not the love of learning.  Being in a “rat race” curving-the-grades competition is not the fun of learning.  I am demanding of each student, but I want her or his achievement and success not to be measured solely by her or his grades.  I want their success be measured also, if not more, by their ability to be playful, loving, and creative.  To paraphrase Carl Jung, the creative mind and heart play with the things they love.

Now they’re beginning to work on their “Sculpture Thing” project.

Louis