4:50 am.  Can’t sleep.  It’s quiet.  Aroma of a freshly brewed cup of coffee.  Chopin softly playing on my Sonos sound system.  No walking.  It’s a Novembrrrrrrrrrr 18 degrees wind chill factor out there. Plants snuggly wrapped in protective visqueen.  It’s so cold, the cockroaches are wearing antennae muffs.  Talking of the cold, I got a chilly a message from a professor in response to my my story of that unexpected meeting with the student from the Holocaust class last Thursday morning during my walk.  “That’s only one student,” she said with a nip in her air.  “Surely you couldn’t get to them all like that….at best you can only get to some or a few….Doesn’t seem worth the time and effort…I question your effectiveness….doesn’t sound like a very efficient use of your time…”

Reasonable enough by her standards.  But, not by mine.  I told her that I knew I couldn’t get to them all anymore than could she.  No one can, and it’s unrealistic to judge someone by that factory-type production line measure.  So, I said, I don’t play the “100% game.”  But, at the same time I don’t ease off.  I just don’t know how many “some” or “a few” are.  In any event, I don’t have to get to them all.  There is in the Talmud an obligatory statement by a first century rabbi, Rabbi Tarfon, “You are not required to complete the task, but neither are you free to avoid it.”  I’ll put it in another way:  just because getting to them all is impossible doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.  The “some” or “few” students are reminders that give meaning to our lives, a someone and something that give us hope.  Still another way is if I accept and embrace the reality of my limitations, I won’t be uptight about them, and I’ll be free to fully experience them.  And, yet another way, all I have to do is to get to “one” to change the world and alter the future.  Think of that student in the Holocaust class.  Think of how many “ones” she will “get to” in her lifetime, and how many ones those “gotten to’s” will get to.  Ripple effect they call it.

So, that just may be a failing in our system of assessments. While it’s important to be as “efficient” and “effective” as we possibly can, when efficiency and effectiveness are our only criteria, when we play a numbers game, the powerful, self-serving lesser angel within us will try to cook the books one way or another to insure that we game the system to up our numbers by watering down our tasks, taking on smaller and smaller doable tasks, doing only that which is safe and familiar and convenient and comfortable and acceptable, and with which we can demonstrate “effective” and “efficient.”  But, maybe we too highly value immediate efficiency and effectiveness; maybe its more important to be a futurist, to be faithful of our vision–to experiment, to adjust, to adopt, to be respectful, to be trusting and trustworthy, to be fearless, to stretch, to risk, to challenge, to go into the unfamiliar and unknown, to persevere, to endure–the way it can make a difference in the lives of others.  Let’s do some math.  Suppose I “get to” only five students in each class of 50.  A mere 10%:  lousy assessment numbers.  Certainly, inefficient and ineffective you say?  But, add up four classes a semester (five in the old quarter days), two semesters a year (three quarters in the old days), not taking into account summer classes, for 46 years.  Over a lifetime, that adds up to an army of “got to’s” who will get to others, and they to others.  It’s a powerful story that goes on and on and on, made possible by the one line I contributed.

No, as Rabbi Tarfon also said, revealing the secret hidden in plain sight, “The day is short, the labor vast.”  So, I accept and embrace and am inspired by what I know is real, and it will set me free to gratefully, fully, and wholly experience it.  I will let the years of “ineffective” and “inefficient” speak for me.  I will not let a “you can’t get to them all” be an excuse for ignoring, evading, not wanting to know, and not doing anything.  I’m not a short hauler.  I was, am, and will be in it for the long haul. Persevering, committed, enduring faithfulness to my vision, trusting my deeper and inner knowing, not allowing the power of my inner human core be weakened, are the only ways I know how to hang in there.  Sure, as Rabbi Tarfon inferred, I will die with my vision unachieved and without being able to declare a victorious “I’ve done it,”  but I’ll go with the satisfaction of knowing that I was all in, that I put it all on the field, that I gave myself to my vision and used my gifts to strive to achieve that vision with everything I had, and that I did make a difference.

Louis