Well, while in “retirement” these past two weeks, among other things, I’ve decided to get scrape off the moss on my stone and get it arollin’, and to pull out the grass growing under my feet.  Among other things,  I’ve been doing more than toying with the idea of putting together a series of self-publishing e-books, the working series title of which is “‘Careful’ Teaching.”  Each volume is going to be a chronological, unedited (grammatical and spelling corrections only) collection of my Random Thoughts patterned after my previously four traditionally published collections.  The first volume, however, is going to be a bit different from the previous four and the five that will follow.  It’s going to be a “dictionary” what will be composed of those Random Thoughts that were part of my “Words For My Dictionary of Good Teaching,” that series which began with “water” in 1999 in response to a student’s demand for guiding words and are peppered throughout the nearly 750 (a “whew” is in order at this point) Random Thoughts that followed over the years.  At the thematic core of each word is what I call “three little, big words”:  faith, hope, and love.

As I started pulling out, reading, tweaking grammar and spelling only, and collecting these over sixty or so “wordy” reflections, I started thinking.  Lately, there’s been a lot of demanding and commanding on our campus and throughout the System.  There’s been a lot of ordering to put academic things in order.  Yet, a lot of this ordering around has done little other than to create a subtle, fearful, disorder.  A lot of these institutional mission statements haven’t made us into educational missionaries.  A lot of these directives haven’t directed us in the right direction.  All this downward mandating of accountability, assessment, funding, retention, and tenure is just that:  mandating.  They tell us what to do, almost without a care of what we think or feel.  There is a noticeable absence of extensive honest conversation, connection, community.  A lot of talking; little listening. There seldom has been much effort at persuasion.  Threat?  Yes.  Authoritarian authority? Yes.  Managing?  Yes.  Leading? No.  Convincing?  No.  Empathy?  No.   If you were a fly on the wall, you’d hear in private conversations and departmental meetings that all this “ukase-ing” has put too many faculty into a survival “what do you want” and “what will they think” mode and has created an identity crisis that exacerbates an already fearful, risk-aversion climate.   This may be hidden by the fact that such “thou shalt” edicts yield submissive “yes, sir” results, but they are reluctant, whispering, anxious, cynical, pessimistic, suspicious, complaining compliance.  Such commandments from on high, however, yield very little optimistic, enthusiastic, meaningful, and cooperative commitment.  The real result is that so few people are biting at the bit game, are rarin’ to get into the game, or are avidly in the game.

The reason for this is that I don’t know of a time when academia, at the classroom grunt level especially, had the crucial conversations with itself about what we are paid to do and just what business or businesses we are in.  There’s a lot of perception, a lot of expectation, a lot of finger pointing, a lot of denial, but not much honest soul searching.  So, during these first two weeks of my retirement, as I went back over my archived “Words For My Dictionary of Good Teaching” I got to thinking about something Confucius supposedly said.  To paraphrase him, in order to put academia in order, we must put our institutions in order; to put our institutions in order, we must put our schools or colleges in order; to put our schools or colleges in order, we must put our departments in order; to put our departments in order, we must put its faculty in order; to put its faculty in order, we, the faculty, must ourselves in order; to put ourselves in order, we must put our hearts in right order; to put our hearts in the right order, we must be committed to a shared vision beyond trite and cliche mission statements and authoritarian commands.  To have a shared vision, we must reflect upon and articulate upon who we want to be.  To put it another way, nothing we do will really change until we realize, accept, and work on changing our attitudes; and, we won’t work on changing our attitudes until we have a true change of heart about who we are and who we want to be, as well as what business we are truly in.

My one bright light of optimism, at least, on my campus, is the attitude of our new president, as well as that of our interim Provost.  In the short few months that  they have been in their positions, I’ve come to believe they understand this.  I believe they are collegial persuaders rather than aloof commanders.  They know they’ve got to be in it for the long haul, .  They’re not playing the gimmick or bandwagon or fad game.  They know that nothing worthwhile is either simple or easy or quick or instant.  I’ll repeat that: they know nothing worthwhile is either simple or easy or quick or instant.  It’s something that demands, more than anything else, the commitment, dedication, and perseverance of an arduous long haul overhaul of “why” rather than a quickie overnight delivery of “how” and “what.”    And, to say it’s complicated or that it is hard should not be taken, as too often has been done in the past, by anyone as an excuse to do nothing.

Now, since Susie and I are getting ready to haul out of here for two weeks of holiday grandmunchkin spoiling, we would like to wish each of you a happy, merry, and all that.  May your Yule Log burn brightly and may your turn of the calendar portend a year of joy.  See you around.

Louis

 

Well, yesterday morning was a turning point.  Downside became upside.  End became beginning.  Winter became spring.  I had said the hell with the ache from this nagging shin splint.  Actually, I was saying the hell with this nagging ache in my spirit, but didn’t want to admit that at the time.  I wasn’t in my rhythm.  I hadn’t been for the last few months.  I had been chalking it off to a lingering ache from that imbuprofen hiddden shin splint.  I didn’t realize that I had been deluding myself until about half way into my walk.  About a mile out, as I walked the dark, quiet, pre-dawn streets, I suddenly stopped, looked around me, gazed at the dark cloudy sky.  Before the colors of a dawning sun streaked across the sky, I felt an inner, “I’ve had it with me,” “Damascus moment” dawning.

There is a Zen saying:  “as irrigators lead water where they want to nurture their crops, as archers make their arrows straight to hit the target, as carpenters carve wood to create beauty, so the wise shape their hearts and minds.  Well, lately I haven’t been watering my crops, the arrows I have been fashioning were so crooked they couldn’t have hit the proverbial broad side of the barn, my carvings were anything but eye-catching, and I certainly have not been wise.  You see, I let this unexpected, unwanted, so fast upon me, in from left field, unprepared for, and sudden retirement get to me.  I felt I was being put into a corner where I didn’t want to be, having to make a decision I didn’t want to make, having to do what I didn’t want to do.  Since the beginning of August, outside the classroom, I have been something of a growling bear.  I haven’t been easy to live with.  I’ve been a mixture of deep sadness, disappointment, and inner raging anger.  The only relief I had was in Susie’s arms and in the classroom.  Otherwise, I felt old, over the hill.  I felt it was over.  I saw myself as the caterpillar whose world was coming to an end as it entered a cocoon.

We here in the States are talking about the “fiscal cliff” approaching in a couple of weeks if Congress doesn’t get it’s act in shape.  Well, I felt I had gone over my cliff.  The University has just gotten a new president whom I like, really like.  “Admire” is a better.  “Deeply respect” is closer to the truth of my attitude.  He’s my kind of person.  Who is on the same page as I am.  With whom I was really looking forward to supporting and working with, as much as a classroom grunt can.  And, now?  Then, there was the last day of a class when at the end of that class a student came up to me, tears in her eyes, hugged me, and thanked me as she told me that my telephone call to her one fateful night a couple of months ago after reading her journal entry came at the very time she had a bottle of pills in her hand.  That same day, the students in the Holocaust class gave me a magnificent plaque commemorating a tree in Israel they bought in my honor in gratitude for “educating students on the importance of humanity.” Want to talk about being thrown into a funk?

I was having a lot of “those days” since my official announcement of my retirement at the beginning of August.  All the “congratulations” from well-meaning people didn’t help.  They only exacerbated the situation.  Their words sounded so matter-of-fact, so expected, so trifling, so trite, and so clichéd.  Their smiles looked so “put on.”  One person came up to me and sort of summed it up, saying, “Congratulations!  You’re lucky.  I envy you.  Now you can do everything you’ve wanted to do!”  What the heck?  I didn’t understand and yet I did understand.  I was doing everything I wanted to do!  Is that so rare, I asked myself.  I had known about it was from studies that showed only 10% of the people in the workforce were truly happy with their jobs, but now that truth was hitting me square in the face.  I was one of those “10 %-ers” who loved what he was doing and doing what he loved.   I was a teacher!  I was making a difference in students’ lives!  I was changing the world!  I was altering the future!  Now, it would be no more.  What the hell was there to celebrate?  They think I’m happy just because they’d be happy?  I didn’t feel in any congratulatory mood.  Even though I was snarling inside with a screaming “I don’t want to retire,” my darling, angelic Susie, kept admonishing me.  “Put on your smilie face. They don’t understand. They mean well.”

I had been losing my way.  I increasingly felt lost.  I was off-balance.  Well, it’s two weeks since I officially retired.  During those two weeks I was talking with three people to whom I am indebted, not the least of whom is my Susie.  Every time I felt I was going over the cliff, there she was with a loving lifeline of a shoulder, an ear, hug, a touch, a kiss.  God, after 47 years, I still can’t believe how lucky I was to have had that blind date I didn’t want have.  There were two “been waiting for you” and “you can still be a teacher” and “you’ll just have a different ‘classroom'” conversations with my good friends Todd Zakrajeck and Don Fraser.  And, then, last Sunday I watched a segment CBS’ “Sunday Morning.”

So, there I was.  Yesterday morning.  Standing in the middle of a dark street.  Feeling my heart pounding.   Intensely aware of my breathing, deliberately listening to the rhythmic almost mesmerizing passage of air in and out of my lungs.  The pace of my breathing and of my heart beat had nothing to do with pushing my body.  It had everything to do with pushing my soul.  It was filling with feelings.  My mind was filling with thoughts.  My spirit was filling with anticipating happiness.  I was having a “Spencer Tracy moment” from GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER, whispering a “I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch” to myself.  I went over to the curb, sat on the cold concrete, and closed my eyes.  With my eyelids shut tight, I looked with my heart’s eye at and saw all those circumstances I was letting determine my mood and at all those people who were trying to tell me who I was and what I should do and what I will do.  Unhinged by the slightest gesture and the smallest comment.  Annoyed, seeing that nothing was slight or small.  Frustration, sadness, anger–and fear–imagining my life would be ruined by retirement.  Followed by guilt of what I had been putting Susie through.  Facing self-deception.  Not feeling proud about all these feelings.  But, if I am to take credit for positives, I have to take responsibility for negative ones.  Then, a good talking to me.  I focused once again on my Self.  “Louis, dammit.  They’re right.  Susie is right!  You’re the one who is wrong.  You won’t be a different person in retirement from the person you were in the classroom.  You’ll feel different, but deep inside you won’t be a different person.” I realized that I had become disconnected from my Self.   I had let my on solid footing with my Self be liquefied by this earth-shaking retirement stuff, my consistent Self become inconsistent, my unshakable Self be shaken.  I was watching myself think and feel.  I realized retirement had nothing to do with my imbalance and losing my way.  It was all me.  I had lost control.  But, I’m still there.  I’m still intact.  Time to regain control.  Time to reunite me with Self into one.

So, I’ll be damned if I’m going to ride off into some sunset and go quietly into the good night.  I’m going to keep walking toward the sunrise and make noise during the good daylight.  No, burnt out shell of an old man for me.  I am going into at least four businesses.  First, I am going to keep writing and sharing my Random Thought.  I’m going to keep being up on things.  Second, having contacted Amazon’s CreateSpace, I am going into the self-publishing business.  I’ve got literally at least nine–NINE–books to put together, and I am not going to wait for a profit conscious publisher say yea or nay:  a “biography” of the early history of Valdosta’s Jewish community I call “Chant of Ages, Cry of Cotton” that had been “pink slipped” because publishers want me to do what I don’t want to do, a “Dictionary of Teaching “(lousy title, I know) drawn from selected Random Thoughts,  six volumes of archived Random Thoughts I may put individually or  into two or three box sets that a lot of people have been clamoring for me to publish, and putting together the student reflections during the Holocaust class’ Star Project that I may call “Yellow Star.”  As for the third business, like Paladin of the old TV western:  “Have Vision, Will Travel.” I’m going to spread the word and put myself out there to do workshops on my experience, methods, and vision of teaching, as well as on my philosophy of education, for anyone who’s willing to listen and talk with me–for a fee.  And, if they don’t pick up my offer, that’s okay.  And finally, maybe the most important, I’ve got to get to work on Susie’s long “honey-do” list.

I think there is a lesson in this for all of us.  You see, I suddenly saw that I could live a purposeful life, one built around doing things that I love doing and that matters, during what has been called the “waning,” “leaving behind” years of traditional retirement.  Remember I had said that everyone had been telling me how to act?  Everyone had been  telling me who to be? Everyone had been telling me that retirement is great?  The truth is that everyone had been telling me about them, not about me.  I was not telling me much of anything worthwhile.  Well, now its time I tell me about me.  Where I couldn’t imagine doing anything outside the classroom, I now can see how being in this different time and place I can continue living a purposeful life and making a difference in the lives of others.  To me, teaching was not a job; it was not work; it was fun, hard fun, but serious fun; it was joy, hard joy, but not superfluous joy; it was such a labor of love that all the time and effort never seemed laborious.    Then, I realized what I had been doing and want to continue doing is not bound by time, place, or even people; that “leaving” and “making” and “being” should be one.  By that I mean, people talk of leaving a legacy.  How about being one, now.  People talk about leaving the world a better place.  How about making it a better place, now.  People talk about leaving tracks behind.  How about making those tracks, now.  Before the sun rose, it dawned on me that retirement is not composed of left-over years, but of different years; that desire, purpose, meaning, significance, fulfillment, satisfaction are not determined by age.  Vitality need not be reinvented, but merely continued.    Satisfaction, meaning, fulfillment can occur in a host of life stages so that you never really leave the stage.

Sure, we’ll spoil the grandmunchkins at our leisure; sure I’ll take vacation trips with my Susie when we want.  But, I’m still in the game.  I’m still on the field.  No substitutions for me.  No bench warming or standing on the sidelines for me.  No being a mere pom-pom bearing cheerleader.  Pity party is over.  No more being a caterpillar.  I’m a butterfly emerging from the cocoon beginning a new life. In the words of a recent Cal Thomas column, no more mope, just hope.  In my words, no more dour and sour, just sweetness; no more sore, just soar; no more anger, just joy.  To paraphrase Tommy Mercer’s lyrics, just accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative.  I will not let this retirement thing become my identity!!

All in the course of a few short minutes.    Yeah, a “Damascus moment” it was.

I took a breath, a deep breath, a breath to my tippy toes.   I looked around, noticing the sun peeking over the distant trees.  The nighttime was giving way to the daytime while the darkness within me was giving way to light.  Silly me.  I thought I was walking on my route.  But, my walking routed me back to my way.  Relaxed, my spirits lifted, I lifted my body up from the curb, I focused on the streets ahead.   Refreshed, renewed.  New.   I finished my walk effortlessly as if I had the wings of Mercury on my shoes. I’m back in my rhythm.  Everything around me will change.  I won’t; and I hope I won’t make that mistake again.  It’ll be like walking a balance beam:  just shift my weight, extend my arms, teeter here, totter there, keep my balance, stay upright and steady, and have a lot of fun doing it.  And, if I fall off, just hop back on and start all over.  I’m fine. Welcome to life.

A Zen master held up a flower for his disciples to see and asked them to say one word of relevance–just one word–about it.  The disciples vied with each other to outdo each other to come up with something profound as a demonstration of their insight and the extent of his learning.  They offered names, symbols, emotions, descriptions, caricatures, metaphors, images, analogies.   One disciple said nothing.  He just looked intensely at the flower, nodded, and smiled.  And, the master nodded in return as he, too, smiled, for that disciple was the most learned of all the disciples.

And, do you understand why the silent, smiling disciple was the more learned?  The others were naming, typecasting, labeling, judging, choosing, selecting, limiting, grading, rating.  Each word they threw into the ring carried with it a host of perceptions, presumptions, assumptions, and expectations.  They were making choices between like and dislike, good and bad, ordinary and extraordinary, right and wrong, perfect and imperfect. Every word they threw out had everything to do about them.  Every word they threw out had nothing to do with the flower.  The silent disciple knew what the Master had held up was just “is,” a living entity, and nothing else.  What matters is that something is and what it is, not what it is called or what people believe about it.  He was echoing Shakespeare who has Juliet saying, “Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.  What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  We look at something and say, “This is a flower;” we give it a name, “This is a rose;” we endow it with qualities, “How beautiful” or “It smells delicious.”  But, is it a “flower?”  Is it a “rose?”  Is it “beautiful” and “delicious?”  And that becomes our reality. But, who says all this?  And, why?

Sounds like a bunch of silliness, doesn’t it.  Let me make a tad more complicated.  Take another something that is.  We call it a “dandelion” and it conjures up inferior images compared to those generated by “rose.”  Is it inferior to a rose?  Or have we placed them into separate, separated, limiting, graded categories which we invented according to our likes and dislikes?  But, what is a dandelion and what do say about it?  Find it in a manicured lawn and we angrily condemned it as a pernicious weed; put it in the hands of a child and we delight in it as a plaything; and, see it in a forest clearing, we swoon over it as a pretty wild flower.  It is all of these things and it is none of them.  Are we, then, merely expressing our selective, judgmental tastes, or as John Locke said, impositions of the mind of man on Nature in a quest for intelligible order?  In reality is what we call “flower” simply “something that is,” simply intricate and complex, miraculous, without the confining, valuations, definitions, and names imposed by us?  Perception doesn’t change circumstances, it changes the meaning of the facts to us.   Our perceptions are the result of our dominant experiences and memories, feelings and thoughts that have created our presumptions, assumptions, and expectations which, in turn, show up in our mental, emotional, and physical actions.

Now, replace “flower,” or better yet, “dandelion” with “student.”  See how “student” morphs when we say “jock,” “Greek,” “honors,” “non-traditional,” or “probation.”  What is our reality. What is that person’s reality?  Does labelling each person prevent us from having a full experience with each of them?  Does it strip each of them of her or his humanity?  Does it turn each of them into plastic or silk flowers?  Do we know what is happening between the lines?  Do we know of each person’s back-beat or stage scenery?  As I once asked long ago, does it put us out of touch with the myriad of human struggles around us. Do we need in the classroom a more humanizing understanding and deeper vision of those individuals in there–including ourselves?  So, let me ask you the unspoken question:  do you know the neighborhood you’re living in?  Do you understand that each of them, no more or less than us, is not emotionally sterile, that each of them is not a tranquil corpse,  Do you know all that much about each of those people from labels, from appearances, from behaviors, from performance records, from  assessments; from gender, sexual preference, ethnic background, skin color, religious affiliation?   One set of answers is “You don’t know how really diverse it is, so diverse it defies label, stereotype, and generalization.”  How much of it is invented?  How much of it is looking with eyes, mind, and heart closed?

By what criteria, then, do we answer those questions?   How will we wrestle with the conundrums between dealing with the many and seeing the individual; between institutional governing and really gritty, eye-to-eye, first hand, classroom grunt teaching; with ethical ambiguities and messy compromises; with the complicated questions of economic realities and faculty self-survival and serving each student?  It’s important to understand the problems and challenges are as complex as individual human beings themselves because we’re dealing with human beings we call students, faculty, and administrators.   Nevertheless, we have to have our informed–informed–reasons for believing and acting as we do.  With what knowledge of each student, as well as of the latest research on learning, do we respond?  According to what purpose do we select our replying words?  Be careful.  Your answer, as with all but one of the master’s disciples, is a window into an inborn attitude; it is a mirror of what you believe about students, what perceptions with which you come to the table, the extent of your unconditional dedication and commitment to each student.

Our focus should be not just on seeing possibilities, but creating opportunity; and not just on creating opportunities, but on creating an environment that leads at least the most malleable people on our campus–the students–to seize opportunities.  Our focus should be on creating an educating, humanizing, and humane institution.  The complicated realities insure that there are no silver bullets, no magic wands, and that helping people to help themselves is hard.  It’s a sociological, psychological, philosophical, and civics lesson wrapped up in one governing and educating lesson.  It’s a Rorschach test with different participants seeing what they want to see.  Nevertheless, we still have to be careful.  Those answers determine the extent to which we look or see and hear or listen or are mindless or mindful to the truth about an individual student.

So, I’ve got a radical idea.  Let’s look that reality created by labels, stereotypes, and generalizations right in the eye and deny it.  Like the most learned of the disciples, let’s go “label-blind” and “stereotype-deaf.”  Let’s take and live my Teacher’s Oath.  Let’s just care, give a damn, believe in, have faith in, be hopeful for, love, support, encourage without any qualifying ifs, ands, or buts.  Let’s open the flood gates and believe each person is a sacred soul and has a unique potential; that she or he is an important thread in the fabric of all that is and will be; and, that you should teach “all in” with your whole being, using every ounce of your creativity.  Let’s start being the person who is there unconditionally to help each person help themselves become the person each is capable of becoming.  If you don’t, you lose sight of the opportunities before you; you won’t have the will to seize opportunities; and you won’t  want or be able to place yourself in the right place at the right time with the right stuff.

Louis

A Zen story:

A student, intent on confounding his master, pointed to a dog lying in the corner and asked, “What do you call that?”

Not taking the bait, the master answered the student’s question with a question, “What do you call it?”

“I call it a dog.”

The master replied, “You call it a dog, but you have not said all there is to say about it.”

Now, replace “dog” with “student.” Do you see the point?  Most of us are blind to the mystery of the individual human being.    Oh, we look at the students; we do a lot of looking.  And, we hear the students; we do lots of hearing.  But, the real question is whether we do a lot of penetrating seeing and listening.  Do we enter the classroom with unconditionally outstretched hands or poised to do battle?  Do we touch or are we out of touch?  Do we open our ears, eyes, and hearts and focus on a student as if she or he is the most important thing in the universe?  Are we participants or onlookers?  Are we in the game or spectators in the stands?  Do we dress students in metaphoric costumes?  Like dupes of marketeers, do we gaze at the labels, read the names, look at the imagery, the rely on someone else’s suggestions, and make our choices without tasting the wine in the bottle?  Do we know, really know, each person’s story.

So many of us fall victim to a “perception bias” by which we blind and deafen ourselves and get lost in back alleys of “attribution error.”  We talk in terms of purifying perceptions; we talk in terms of black-and-white presumptions; we talk in terms of lock step assumptions; we talk with labels, of “they,” “students,” “class,” “don’t belongs,” “student body,” “honor students,” “average students,” “poor students,” “Greeks,” atheletes,” “freshmen,” “majors,” “seniors,” “graduates,”  etc. as if we say all there is to say and know all there is to know about that mysterious, magical, sacred, noble, invaluable, and very unique, individual human being.

The classroom is a inevitably messy and impure place.  There are always unexpected events.  The classroom is fraught with serendipity; it is filled with incongruities; students are ever-changing; student needs are never static; and, above all, students are unique individuals.  I submit that effective teaching, meaningful teaching, purposeful teaching is visionary teaching in a real world.  It is innovative, inventive, creative, imagination, autonomous, and significant.  It is adoption, adaptation and innovation for the specific purpose of helping different and unique individuals to learn as they and the situations inevitably change.  It is a dedication to that single person in the classroom with you; it is to think and act in holistic ways; it is the focused effort to see each student and search for opportunities to connect with that student for the purpose of helping her/himself to see and reach for her/his potential; it is an endless poem written of countless lines; it’s a commitment to systematic adaptation, experimentation, and innovation in an environment of daily shifting sands and changing currents.  Maybe if we stop spending so much time clumping those individuals into groups, if we stop being PC and merely rearranging our biases, if we stop reorganizing our stereotypes, we might have time to find ways to dive into reality, to learn about, get to know, and love each of them.

The reality is that all the recent research about teaching and learning is all well and good.  The problem is that the new understandings and opportunities it offers rarely fits into the establishment; it rarely fits the habits of students; it rarely fits the way academics have approached the classroom and students; it rarely fits to what both student and faculty are already doing; it rarely fits into the risk-aversion, fear campus mentality.  That is why learning about the recent research on learning is a process of unlearning; why it is time consuming; why it demands a lot of lead time; why it takes a risk-taking trial and error application; why it needs a strong safety net of vertical and horizontal support and encouragement.

And then there is the deepest pitfall:  if all this time, effort, and energy are in the service of each student, just who exactly are the students; who are the individual students; and how do you find out, or, at least, get an inkling.  Now, I admit you have to keep at it if for no other reason than the sure-fire, quick “tricks” that everyone is looking for don’t exist.  I’ll repeat that:  there are no sure-fire, quick “tricks.”   As I used to write on the whiteboard, “Beginning is tough; continuing is just as tough.”  You need to develop and practice practices that teach you to be present, to pay attention to the present moment with individuals who are in your presence.

Now, I am not suggesting that you have to know of every corpuscle, vein or artery, bone, neuron, muscle, or whatever of each student.  I am not suggesting you have to know every chapter and verse of each student’s story.  I am suggesting that you be intensely mindful that each is there, that you enter a class and see a gathering of separate and sacred “ones” rather than a crowd or herd.  I am suggesting that you need a focused and channeled attention, a technique of contemplation.  I am suggesting that you learn and use practices you engage in every day to engage in every moment with each student.  I am suggesting learning and practicing a mindfulness, that unites see, listen, feel, you, and her or him into one see/listen/teach entity.  I am suggesting that you have raised antennae and know each person is there in her or his uniqueness and worthiness and be ready to be there for her or him when needed.  I am suggesting that you have to be ready for an impromptu playing of a variation on the theme.  I am suggesting that seeing and listening are adventures.  I am suggesting that seeing and listening are challenges.  I am suggesting that seeing and listening are opportunities.  I am suggesting that seeing and listening are discoveries.  I am suggesting that seeing and listening are an unlearning your learned blurring stereotypes, fuzzy generalizations, opaque perceptions, impersonal presumptions, and lifeless assumptions.  Maybe we should listen closely, very closely, to Mother Teresa when she said, “I never look at the masses as my responsibility.  I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time….Just one, one, one.”

Louis

Do you know what is the greatest need on our campuses?   It’s a cure for loneliness, disconnection, and strangerness.  It is a treatment for being unnoticed, unwanted, unappreciated, and unloved.  It is a regimen for dealing with disbelief, sense of unworthiness, lack of confidence, and hopelessness.  It is a remedy for debilitating fear.  And yet, the treatment is simple:  a simple, sincere, smile; a simple, soft, kind word; a simple, gentle, warm touch.  These are small things that when done with great love make the earth shake.  They are simple but beautifully courageous acts of caring that turn heads and lives around.  I say “courageous” because courage isn’t always about slaying dragons.  It sometimes is that undaunted inner whisper that says at the beginning of the day I’ll give it another shot today.   As I have often said, miracles will fall into your lap only if you courageously move your lap to where they are falling.  When you help a student change her or his mind and heart, you’ve changed a life.  The remedy, then, is to care, to love, until it hurts.  If you do, the hurt will be diminished until it is no more.  Care, love, tirelessly and you won’t tire from doing it.  Trust me, all I can say is that this past semester I’ve seen a smile do its work; I’ve felt love makes its presence felt; I’ve listened to how touching a touch was; I’ve read how an extended reach reached.

After all, when we don’t extend love to ourselves and each student, when we don’t help each student extend love to herself or himself, when we don’t unconditionally believe in, have faith, have hope for each and every student,  everyone is held back.  To think otherwise, we won’t break free from our emotional and mental bondage; we won’t come together; we’ll have no empathy for each’s story; we’ll offer no sympathy; we won’t honor the pains, anguishes, confusions; we’ll won’t make any effort of helping each finds her or his place.  So, take love out of the closet. Please.  Nothing–nothing–inspires, nothing blesses and endows a feeling of being blessed, nothing liberates, like love.  By love I mean feeling deeply and vitally alive.  By love I mean having something to live for, not just living.  By love I mean the desire to help.  By love I mean giving your wholeheartedness to serve.  By love I mean being non-judgmental.  By love I mean feeling, thinking, and acting as if what you do makes a difference.

Be your own Magi following your own guiding star and you’ll notice how much bigger your heart gets, how much more open your embrace becomes, how much broader your smile appears, how much louder your “yes” becomes, how much happier you are, how much “dancier” are the steps you take, how more filled you are with a sense of fulfillment, how much more at peace you feel, and, maybe most important, how much younger you get as you get older.

My angelic Susie and I would like to take this time to wish all you good people, a happy lighting of your Chanukah candles, a merry burning of your yule log, and a happy turn of the calendar. May you live the joy, warmth, and community of this holiday season in each and every day throughout the year.

Louis