AND SO?

         It’s been quite an emotionally draining week of struggling to come to terms with unexpected and tragic loss.  The heavens were sorrowfully weeping with torrential tears at the funeral with the sudden arrival of an angel in its midst.  It was the heart-wrenching wailings and tears that made me think about a recent David Brook’s oped piece, “What Suffering Does.”  Having had an unwanted but seminal volcanic epiphany in 1991, having survived a bout with cancer in 2004, and somehow “miraculously” having come through an unexpected massive cerebral hemorrhage unscathed in 2007, I know what he is talking about:  there’d be no bravery or courage if everything in life was without challenge and all was hunky-dory anymore than there would be any learning without failing.  But, I wouldn’t use the word “suffering.”  It’s too narrow for me.  I prefer the broader and more inclusive term “experience.” Yet, I don’t think suffering or experience have much intrinsic worth.  I mean, so you’ve gone through stuff; or, as have I, you’ve looked into the abyss.  So what!   What are you going to do with it?  Is it a spur?  And, if so, what are you going to learn from it?  How can you better yourself because of it?

You see, using Brook’s word, while there is a lot of suffering around and in us, there  also can be lot of dealing with, coming to terms with, casting off, overcoming, and getting up and keep moving within us as well.  That is to say, experiences need a catalyst to acquire a meaning.  That ingredient is “And so?” honest reflection.  That honest and deep reflection, that looking at yourself in the mirror,  gives you a shape-shifting option: to see how what you might let bring you down can give you a leg up; how it can morph challenge from barricade into possibility and opportunity; how it can transform mill stones into dream catchers; how it can offer the ability to bring the blessing of gift out from under the weight of curse; how it can offer a power to choose the way you see life; how it can offer you the way you live life; how it can give you a strength to push away adversity; how it can give you a power over frustration and disappointment;  and how it can give you the strength and courage not to succumb to views and demands of others.

But, for too many, looking back is TMI. How many of us really want to hear the past voices of ourselves?  Not many.  I sure didn’t want to on that fateful day in September, 1991.  In fact, I sobbed.  Of course, the truth is that you can’t help it.  As an historian, I can tell you that the silent and unseen, buried, rationalized away, or otherwise past is always present.  More often than not, reflection is a hard, maybe painful, autobiographical interview and confession.  Sure, you’ll hear stories that might surprise you, tighten you up, make you shudder, hurt, hurl pangs of pain, tear your eyes up, induce a shudder, cause a nervous laugh, and/or create a smile.  But, you’ll also may be able eventually, as did I, to empathize and even sympathize, to see possibility, and to seize opportunity.  Each chapter in your story will help explain parts of who you were, are, and maybe will become.  For me, reflection is crucial, for it pulled and still pulls me deeper into myself, beneath the surface of daily routine, to plug into the passion of my soul.  It’s a reverse macro lens that broadens into a wide-angle lens.  Reflection can take a negative cursed experience and give it a positive blessed bent if you ask yourself, “How can I grow and learn from it?” It gives me a living serenity prayer, better knowing what I can and cannot control.

Now, reflection is not something you can be phlegmatic about or bog yourself down in wonky talk about “vision” “priority,” “empowering,”  “authenticity,”  and “meaning.”  For me, having “down and dirty,” “foot in the real world” reflections on my experiences has given me a holistic serenity with which I have deeply engaged, with which I have become enmeshed, and which has allowed me to live at a place closer to self acceptance and peaceful power.

Louis
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About Louis Schmier

LOUIS SCHMIER “Every student should have a person who wants to help him or her help himself or herself become the person he or she is capable of becoming, and I’ll be damned if I am ever going to let one human being fall through the cracks in my classes without a fight.” How about a snapshot of myself. But, what shall I tell you about me? Something personal? Something philosophical? Something pedagogical? Something scholarly? Nah, I'll dispense with that resume stuff. Since I believe everything we do starts from who we are inside, what we believe, what we perceive, and what we do is an extension of ourselves, how about if I first say some things about myself. Then, maybe, I can ease into other things. My name is Louis Schmier. The first name rhymes with phooey, the last with beer. I am a 76 year old - in body, but not in mind or spirit - born and bred New Yorker who came south in 1963. I met by angelic bride, Susie, on a reluctant blind date at Chapel Hill. We've been married now going on 51 years. We have two marvelous sons. One is a VP at Samsung in San Francisco. The other is an artist with food and is an executive chef at a restaurant in Nashville, Tn. And, they have given us three grandmunchkins upon whom we dote a bit. I power walk 7 miles every other early morning. That’s my essential meditative “Just to …” time. On the other days, I exercise with weights to keep my upper body in shape. I am an avid gardener. I love to cook on my wok. Loving to work with my hands as well as with my heart and mind, I built a three room master complex addition to the house. And, I am a “fixer-upper” who allows very few repairmen to step across the threshold. Oh, by the way, I received my A.B. from then Adelphi College, my M.A. from St. John's University, and my Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I have been teaching at Valdosta State University in Georgia since 1967. Having retired reluctantly in December, 2012, I currently hold the rank of Professor of History, Emeritus. I prefer the title, “Teacher”. Twenty-five years ago, I had what I consider an “epiphany”. It changed my understanding of myself. I stopped professoring and gave up scholarly research and publication to devote all my time and energy to student. My teaching has taken on the character of a mission. It is a journey that has taken me from seeing only myself to a commitment to vision larger than myself and my self-interest. I now believe that being an educator means I am in the “people business”. I now believe that the most essential element in education is caring about people. Education without caring, without a real human connection, is as viable as a person with a brain but without a heart. So, when I am asked what I teach, I answer unhesitatingly, “I teach students”. I am now more concerned with the students’ learning than my teaching, more concerned with the students as human beings than with the subject. I am more concerned with reaching for students than reaching the height of professional reputation. I believe the heart of education is to educate the heart. The purpose of teaching is to instill in all students genuine, loving, lifelong eagerness to learn and foster a life of continual growth and development. It should encourage and assist students in developing the basic values needed for learning and living: self-discipline, self-confidence, self-worth, integrity, honesty, commitment, perseverance, responsibility, pursuit of excellence, emotional courage, creativity, imagination, humility, and compassion for others. In April, 1993, I began to share ME on the internet: my personal and professional rites of passage, my beliefs about the nature and purpose of an education, a commemoration of student learning and achievement, my successful and not so successful experiences, a proclamation of faith in students, and a celebration of teaching. These electronic sharings are called “Random Thoughts”. There are now over 1000 of them floating out there in cyberspace. The first 185, which chronicles the beginnings of my journey, have been published as collections in three volumes, RANDOM THOUGHTS: THE HUMANITY OF TEACHING, RANDOM THOUGHTS, II: TEACHING FROM THE HEART, RANDOM THOUGHTS, III: TEACHING WITH LOVE, and RANDOM THOUGHTS, IV: THE PASSION OF TEACHING. The chronicle of my continued journey is available in an Ebook on Amazon's Kindle in a volume I call FAITH, HOPE, LOVE: THE SPIRIT OF TEACHING. There a few more untitled volumes in the works..

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