Well, during our “What Do You Want To Know About Me” community building session in class, the students were interested in my survival of a massive cerebral hemorrhage and what it meant to me.  I told them that it wasn’t soon after I had returned from the hospital that I experienced survivor syndrome asking with a combination of curiosity, wonder, confusion, and guilt, “Why me?”  I wanted to know why had I survived totally unscathed as a walking “5%-er.”  I was not alone in asking that question.  When bad things happen to good people, we tend to ask, “Why,” with the expectation of answers.   We have an urge for order.  We so want to believe that there is nothing left to a randomness.  We want coherent, identifiable, and simple patterns.  We want guarantees that things happen for a reason.  We want assurances that there is purpose and meaning, maybe even reward and punishment, in everything that occurs.  This belief is embedded in our feeling, thoughts, attitudes, and actions.  We want to be sermonized.  We want to hear pearls of insightful wisdom and knowledge.  We want rational answers.  We demand emotionally satisfying answers.  And, well-intentioned people rush to our aide to fill the void.  They come with unequivocal assertion and affirmation that they know the answers as if they just had had a gin and tonic with the Divine on Sinai’s summit or a bloody mary with Mother Nature out in an idyllic meadow.  But, if we think about it, their offering of assurance and comfort leave us cold and empty as might meaningless clichés, catch-phrases, or trite explanations.  After all, these people are as fallible and finite as we; they put on their pants or pantyhose one leg at a time as do we; and they don’t like the chancy throw of the dice anymore than do we.  In fact, they’re were talking to themselves as much as to me.

Slowly, over the months or recuperation, I came to a realization that maybe, just maybe, we, like Job, are asking the wrong question.  Maybe, we don’t need answers.  Maybe, it’s not enough just to be thankful you survived.  Maybe, we need to go down a heart and spirit checklist to see how we will hence take care of our mandate to live the good life.  Maybe, instead of asking “why,” we should ask the question or questions:  “Now what?”  “What do I draw from this experience?”  “What do I do with this experience?” “What does it mean for my life and those around me?” “How do I apply it to my life?”  “With whom can I share the experience and talk to about it?” “How can I be a both a candle that spreads light and a mirror that reflects it?”  “How can me feelings, attitudes, and movements be my prayer?”  These questions offer some things the static question of “why” doesn’t.  Maybe these questions put our hearts and minds into high gear.  Maybe they’re the ones that offer a purposeful and meaningful place where the future is a better place that we ourselves are creating; where the only paths are the ones we make; where the very act of cutting those paths changes both us, others, and where those paths lead.

It is what we do with adversity and loss, our ability to transform them into positive events–our capability to see opportunity rather than barrier in challenge–that is the greatest lesson I drew from my hemorrhage, as well as earlier from my cancer, and apply those lessons into my personal, social, and professional lives.   I learned that asking these questions and seeking out the answers diminishes threatening feelings, conquers doubts, clarifies confusion, and establishes a more hopeful, resilient outlook,   They don’t require I need, give into, or fight “what will they think.”  For them to bring the rains that end the dry seasons, they do require you to be your own person, to withstand the efforts of others to make you into the person they want you to be.  Then, they will turn the parched mundane into a lush sublime, and the extraordinary will sprout out from the ordinary.   They allow me to live each moment from my own learning and inspiration, not from any desire to look good in the eyes of others.  Now, I’ve been sharing my answers to those questions over the years.  And, I will tell you if you can walk the long and arduous inner road in quest of those answers, you will have a better chance of finding a peace of mind and openness of heart.  You can be exceptionally kind, loving, giving, and respectful without being a slave to the opinions of others.  You’ll discover that your significance doesn’t depend on the approval of others.  You will have a better chance of entering a world where every morning is like a reincarnation, where you live each moment with a thankful heart.  You will have a better chance of entering a world where every day is a renewal, where blessing are everywhere, where everything has meaning, where regrets have no place, where worries are of no use; where we step back from the pain and transform it into compassion, where we step back from stress and strengthen purpose, where we take anger and turn it into healing, where we drop resentment and allow our energy to blossom into enthusiasm.

Louis

I was talking with a bunch of people on my campus and through e-mail.  They had picked up on a passing comment I had made that I, a once avowed “anti-clickerer,” am struggling to learn how to clicker and experiment with using clickers as part of my freshman history classes.  When a few asked me why I was going to “mess” with a good thing, I answered, “I’m like kudzu.  I just keep on growing.”  Then, came the echoing of part of that conversation I had had in the parking lot in the back of Marcum Center at the end of the Lilly Conference last November.  “But what if it doesn’t work?” one asked and then answered her own question before I could say a word, “I know, you don’t care.  You’ve got tenure.”

Well, yes, I do have tenure.  But, no, I do care if clickering works.  Her question and answer had such an imprisoning, even enslaving, tone.  And, that got me to thinking.  Maybe we academics should be less god-like and more deeply human, more forgiving of error and less demanding of perfection, more accepting of our feet of clay less thinking we can walk on the surface of the water.

You know, back in the Great Depression of the 1930s, FDR spoke of four freedoms.  There’s a fifth critical freedom, however, that is often unmentioned and hence ignored, especially on our campuses.  No, I’ll take that back.  It’s more than ignored.  It’s violated, assaulted, belittled, demeaned, denounced, condemn, dismissed, denigrated, banished, forbidden.  We treat its exercise as either a sign of weakness, or a symptom of inadequacy, or an indication of incompetence, or proof of disinterested and unpreparedness.  What is this freedom we crush?  If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’ll tell you.  It’s the freedom to fail.

The exercise of this fifth freedom is at the core of everything we hold dear; it’s the essence of all those people we admire, the “darers” and “doers,” all those who have the nerve to be remarkable:  the explorers, the iconoclasts, the pioneers, the trailblazers, the inventors, the wildcatters, the innovators, the creators, the experimenters, the artists, anyone at the head of the pack.  Without the exercise of this freedom nothing happens.  Without it we think we can be perfect and that perfection is attainable. Without it no one is doing anything.  Without it there are no corrections.  Without it there is no improvement.  Without it there is the false expectation to “get it right on the first try,” “to master instantly,” “to shine immediately,” “to find it’s easy,” “to execute perfectly.”  Without it there is no “what if” attempt, no curious “let’s see,” no imaginative “I wonder,” no “eureka moment.”   Without it there is only “same ole” routine, “I can’t” stagnation, “I better not” paralysis, “won’t” ossification, and “don’t” atrophy.

There is weakness and submission in a fear of failure while there is a power and independence in a fearlessness of it.  The most powerful person on our campuses, the most valuable person, should be the person who has the most independent mind, who has the toughness to withstand pressures to conform, who is “difficult,” who has unusual perspectives, who is not a go-along, get-along “team player,” who is not stymied by her or his own fear of failure, who learns from the failure, and uses the lessons to discover, change, grow, and improve.

We tell students that they learn from the consequences of their errors.  It’s no different with us.  The road to an accomplished “aha” is lined with a bunch of “oops.”  Yet, we penalize ourselves, as we do students, for making mistakes.  If anyone fails at something on our campuses, it starts a feeding frenzy.  We think if anyone has screwed up, they’re screw ups; that they’re failures if they’ve failed.  We so let fear of making mistakes be the theme of stories we create in our minds that continue to give power to our fears, limitations, and inadequacies; that force us to submit to “what will they think.”  We let fear of making mistakes distort our values and skew our ethics.  We let mistakes, or the fear of making them hold us back, and hide our true abilities from ourselves.  And, as we do it to ourselves, we do it to students.  If we are unforgiving of failure when people try to do something new, how can we expect to encourage and support them to risk failure in order to be imaginative, creative, and innovative?  We can’t, and they won’t be.  They’ll be scared to death to experiment with something, as they usually are.  And we wonder why we, as avowed harbingers of change, are the greatest resistors to change?

Yet, I ask this:  if we’re afraid of the storms at sea, if we prefer to stay safely anchored in a protected cove, how will be learn to sail?  We have created a “fail dangerous” attitude in academia when what we need is a “fail safe” system that allows anyone to “fail well” so they can “fail forward” in their quest to achieve and succeed  But,what if we saw “failure” as a “practice stage” instead of a mark of Cain, or as a “learning stage” instead finding reason to carve an “F” on our chest, or as a “not yet stage” rather than a cause for shame or embarrassment?  We do that when we rehearse on theater stage, when we go out on the sports field or court and prepare for a season, when we play that instrument for the first time, when we start out learning a hobby, when we initially get on a bicycle or skis.  Why can’t we permit it on our campuses, especially in our classrooms?  Why are so many of us, far too many of us, so fearful of and condemning that “try, try, try again” thing?   I tell students over and over and over again:  if you don’t have the courage to fail, you won’t strive to achieve; if you don’t have the resiliency to withstand error, if you don’t learn and use the lessons of failure, you won’t have an audaciousness to significance and greatness.  And, I stand behind and live those words.

Louis

This weekend I was asked by a friend,  “When you go into any class, what are you conscious of the most?”

I quickly answered, “That I have a shared humanity with each of them!”

Louis

Someone just asked me what my most important learning experience was.  Without a hesitation, I quickly answer, “My cerebral hemorrhage!  Every day it hits me square between the eyes.  By all that is right, I shouldn’t be here with you.  I feel I’m living on borrowed time.  It’s been over three years, I still haven’t really come to terms with the fact that I am a walking 5% miracle when the other 95% are either dead or vegetables.  I am truly thankful to be not only alive, but feel deeply obligated to use my time to make this place a better one.  You see, though I was physically unscathed, I did not survive unaffected.”   I went on to tell her that suffering a cerebral hemorrhage, however, contained gifts and life lessons for me.  Nearly dying taught me that death can come at any minute, in any way. We do not know what is in store tomorrow, or, whether there is a tomorrow, or even a tonight!  But still, we have been presented with the the golden present of now, and it is greatest of sins not to open that gift and use it to its fullest extent.  This moment, now, we are alive and kicking.  Each day I live is precious.  I take nothing for granted.  I don’t let much get me down from my high or holding me down from getting on a high.  I don’t lie down; I keep moving; I keep fighting; I keep learning; I keep growing; I keep change.  I’ve learned how to live.

“You know the holidays have come and gone.  Most people say there is anything on the calendar for a while other than a bunch of ordinary days.  How wrong they are.  There is today:  today, with all its uniqueness, beauty, richness, blessing, goodness, tenderness, and potential.  There isn’t a darn thing ordinary about today.  Just that one outlook has the power to change my life and those of others.” I explained.  “As I’ve slowly dealt with it, it’s been interesting to see how increasingly unimportant my academic titles and scholarly resume are to me, and how much more important each of you are to me.  I’ve concluded more than ever, more than when I had my epiphany twenty years ago, more than when I had cancer almost seven years ago, that the yard stick by which I or anyone else should and will evaluate my life isn’t tenure or title or dollars and cents or books and grants or conference presentations.  I will be measured by the individual people whose lives I’ve touched and in whose lives I’ve made a difference.”

So, nearly dying told me once again–no, it shouted to me–not to think about any level of individual prominence I may have or will achieve; not to focus going after any recognitions.  No, I should concentrate on helping individuals help themselves to become better people.  I make and, more importantly, live my resolution to live every day so that in the end my life will be judged a success. More than having had survived cancer, surviving that cerebral hemorrhage, has taught–commanded–me to live with a thankful and loving heart; to live deeply, intently, intensely, purposefully, and generously; to live a significant rather than an important life; to let a constant stream of goodness flow into my life, through me, and on to others.  I don’t let things get me down, or distract me, or consume me.  Even on stormy days, I see the sun shining above the clouds and appreciate the rains watering my flowers.   I constantly do such things as selecting and living my “word for the day”: to see it, feel it, accept it, and use it.  Today that word I arbitrarily chose is “nuture.”  That refreshing and energizing flow insures that for me each day is a beautiful day filled with possibilities, values, opportunities.  I’ve been hit with the truth that true richness doesn’t come from a grant check or a publication; it doesn’t come from a title or position; it doesn’t come from a salary.  Richness grows from the inside out.

I told them that as I laid in intensive neuro-ICU, Susan and my sons, and my dear friends, taught me that simply being a loving presence is a powerful gift.   When you sincerely admire beauty, you become more beautiful; when you appreciate, you become appreciated; when you’re kind and generous, you will be seen as kindly.  I found that in squarely facing my own fears and daring to ask of myself and others some of life’s most daunting questions, I experienced a profound clarity around my own life’s purpose.  That means, the way I live has an impact on the way I way I am effects how they see me; how they see me ripples out to how they act; and how they act affects others.  It’s that rippling thing. The choices I make shape my day.  I let the goodnesses of life accumulate within me.  And, so, life’s riches grow for me.  My role as a teacher, then, is not to be merely someone who’s there just to fill them with information, but to humbly accompany and help them walk their own unique path and unfold for themselves their own beauty and goodness, even in the face of fear, pain and uncertainty.

I finished telling her,” The cerebral hemorrhage taught me this:  empathize with each and all, love each and all, have faith in each and all, have hope for each and all, believe in each and all, and serve each and all–each and every moment.”

Louis