Diary, the 22nd is about to leave us. Have you ever thought about how people spend their precious feelings and thoughts?  Today my heart and mind were focused on “mindful,” which is still my “Word for the Day” for the next few hours.  Yeah, I take my cards with me wherever I go.  Why do I have them?  It’s because our lives flow from and unfold through our thoughts and feelings.  We live the images we create and feed.  I mean where our feelings and thoughts go, our actions are sure to follow.  What I feel and think has a direct and undeniable connection to what I do.  It’s not technique, method, or technology that provide the stage upon which I perform.  It’s the thousands of thoughts and emotions that I think and feel each day which are the script of how my life will play out.   That’s what Jon Kabat-Zinn means when he says, “wherever you go, there you are.”

So, diary, it pays for me to keep my mind focused on the highest and the best, for they get me to get to and keep in an empowering, meaningful, and purposeful place.  My “Word for the Day” is my way to greet everything and everyone, especially each student, with a sharp stillness and keen focus that cut through distracting noises.  That’s why I still can’t get Tom out of my heart and mind.  I’m not sure I want to because his message is for me a reminder about what would happen if we always accentuated the positive and meaningful, if we were always on the lookout for wonder and awe, if we never succumbed at the first hint of challenge, if we weren’t dismayed or resigned or annoyed, if we never gave up no matter what.

So many people think that the way you feel depends on how things are going when the exact opposite is true.  I mean the likes of Tom is what could happen if we enjoyed the journey.  You see, diary, I refuse not to be awed by each and every student, to find warmth and joy even on the grayest and coldest day.  Yeah, diary, it’s wonder and awe that drive me on.  They’re the alchemist’s lodestone:  they convert the dull into the sharp; they turn a leadened classroom into a dance class; they transform a heap of coal into a treasure chest of sparkling diamonds; they loosen the vise grip of a boring rut; they break numbing routine.  They force me to wonder what each could do if I gave them a chance.  They give me a craving to do better and to see each student do better; they open me up to new and exciting experiences; they keep me awake and alert in class; they unmoor me; they let me be and feel free; they create a reality that is better than anything I can dream. My feelings and thoughts are my deepest and most sincere expectations.  Every fibre of my being picks up on these expectations.  Now, diary, there’s lots I can’t control.  But, I can choose the way to see things and people through the lens of my “Word for the Day, and how I respond to them.  So, I can make the classroom into anything I wish–and do.  Think about it.  In the dead of winter there is always the promise of spring; when all seems lost, there’s always something to be found.  In nearly dying of a cerebral hemorrhage I found how to live even more in the “now” more intently and intensely than I have since my epiphany in 1991.

You know, diary, I love whom I see. I delight in the beauty of every little simple detail of each student.  For me, diary, a student is not an object to be judged, but rather an aspect of my wholeness.  She or he is not apart from me, for whether we see value or worthlessness, we see who we are.  Whether we know it or not, we each have our “words for the day,” that determine how we choose our perspective, our feelings, our thoughts, our words, and our actions. So, we each have the power and potential, no matter what the classroom sends our way, to choose how to look at it and what to do with it.   But, it depends on the nature of our feelings and thoughts, on our sense of meaning and purpose, and whether and to what end we tap them. We just have to work hard at consciously choosing and living by the right words–everyday.

Louis