Labor Day weekend is upon us.  Susie and I are about to hop a plane for some family–and professional–time in D.C.  But, you know, generally Labor Day has lost its meaning.  People no longer take it seriously.  They’ve forgotten it origins.  The parades of my youth celebrating workers rights, protections, contributions have mostly disappeared.  They been replaced by an attitude that it’s little more than a paid day off, a Monday federal holiday, a relaxing and vegging out three day family weekend, the last barbecued hamburgers on the patio grill, the last outdoor concerts, the official launchings of political campaigns, back-to-school savings, the last day of summer, the last day to wear white.   But is it an anachronism?  Maybe.  It can be time to think about your “labors.”  And, in my case it is a the segue into some thoughts I have this morning as a result of a brief conversation I had with a colleague a couple of days ago.  I told you, maybe warned you, that as my reluctant retirement in three months approaches, I’ll probably be reflecting more.

Anyway, this colleague stopped me as I was on my way to class, my boombox blasting out Neil Diamond, and asked me, “Louis, what do you do to students to get them to do what you expect of them?”

I stopped.  Turned towards him.  Lower the volume.  “Nothing!,” I replied.  He looked at me with a question-pocked face.  I went on.  “I don’t do anything ‘to’ them.  I do ‘with’ them.  If I do ‘to’ anyone, it is ‘to’ the only person I can do anything ‘to’:  me.  I’ve found that the psychologists, Carl Rogers and Ed Deci, were right.  I don’t do a thing to students as if they are trained performing seals.  I don’t control them because I’ve learned I can’t.  Threats and rewards don’t usually work.  I don’t even teach them because I can’t.  To think that we can control students sets us up for frustration, resignation, and even anger.  What I can do and strive to do, however, are six active and involved things: first, I live my ‘Teacher’s Oath’ to the word; second, I am their for them. I serve them.  I am their servant-teacher.  My ego is not in it.  I am their partner, their fellow-traveler; third, I have unconditional faith in each of them, valuing of each of them, being in-your-face persistent, refusing to give up on anyone, refusing to surrender when they want to give up on themselves; fourth, I create a safe, supportive, and encouraging, but demanding and challenging “it’s hard” environment.  I serve more their needs, not just their wants;  and, finally, I offer them constant opportunities to see how capable and special each of them is by taking them out of their boxed in ‘box’ in order to expand their box.”   And, we talked a few minutes more before I excuse myself and ran to class so I wouldn’t be late and have to ante up a dollar late fee for my cancer fund.

Thinking about what I said, on this upcoming Labor Day weekend, none of us can make a difference by being indifferent.  I’ll repeat that:  none of us can make a difference by being indifferent.  You can’t be wide awake if you teach in your sleep.  We academics need to exercise ‘extraordinary persistence’ with the firm and unswerving belief that no one is ordinary.  After all, every professional was once a rank amateur.  Even if we think we know who students are, we don’t know who they may become anymore than than they do.  I mean remember my vision:  to be that guy who is there to help each student help her- or himself to become the person she or he is capable of becoming.   It’s an adventure.  It’s an inconvenience or discomfort or distraction, only if you see it that way.  For me, the adventure is an invigorating challenge; it’s possibility; it’s opportunity; it’s the spinal column of inseparable vertebrae of excitement, faith, belief, hope, love, joy, and significance.

Sure, I’m an optimistic believer and lover; what’s the use of being anyone else?  Do you really think you can build something positive with a bunch of negative attitudes?  I don’t.  So, I struggle to help them see that achievement so often does not require extraordinary ability or intelligence as much as extraordinary effort. I model my belief that they are each special and “all” they have to do is to apply their ordinary abilities with extraordinary persistence.  I help them to see that effort is possibility and opportunity, and that without constant self-renewal and adaptation they are not alive and well.  By valuing caring as much as knowing, kindness more than authority, I have found that whatever comes from an unconditionally caring and kindly heart has a far better chance of wining over their hearts, and ultimately their minds.

I don’t let any student go alone or feel alone on this journey; I educate with a reverence for each student, and I know there is no telling what a heart can hold.   When we are aware of what others are doing, when we applaud their efforts, when we acknowledge their successes, when we encourage them, when we help each of them, we all win.  So, I approach and treat each student with grace, dignity, gentleness, kindness in the hope they will acquire a sense of sacredness about themselves.  I help students help themselves, by giving them control, ownership, and responsibility for themselves.  I help students learn that they can sing rather than to sigh, dance rather than plod, stand tall rather than sit passively; I help students fan their own inner embers of possibility into flames of accomplishment rather than merely sift through the cold ashes of impossibility;  I help them see that there are really no mistakes or failures, only lessons to be learned; I help them learn to have belief and faith in themselves rather than constantly distrusting themselves; I help them create the kind of selves in whom they can trust and with whom they will be joyful to live.  And, I just keep the faith and keep up the effort with the firm belief that persistence will get me and each of them there; and, if not there, closer.

Louis

Been up since 3:30 am.  Couldn’t sleep.  Can’t hit the streets.  Did something to one of my tarsai a week ago.  Thank goodness for Motrin 800s.  Thinking about and slowly accepting impending retirement in December.  It’s done.  Submitted the official notice yesterday.  Paper work starts next week.  Knew it was ultimately coming, just not this soon or this way.  Kinda blindsided.  Not so much another chapter in my life is about to begin as another book, and it’s up to me to write it to make sure it’s another sunrise and not a sunset.  Just may share more than usual in these coming three months.  Thinking about writing a book about three semesters worth of experiences, reactions of, and responses to the students in the Remember the Holocaust class wearing yellow stars with “Jew” written on them 24/7 for an entire semester wherever they go.  Recalling something Leo Tolstoy said.  To paraphrase him,  a person can live magnificently if she or he knows how to work and love.  Ain’t that the truth!  I would add:  if she or he knows how to make work and love the same.

I was thinking about those words because of a question a student threw as me yesterday, “Hey, doc, you said we could ask you why we do stuff in class.  You know, like you said, what’s the method of your madness and the madness behind your method.  So, what’s behind the way you’re asking us to learn?  It’s so off-the-wall. You know all this ‘getting to know ya’ stuff and now the two of the four ‘rules of the road’ we’ve done, ‘C’ and ‘Remember the Chair?’ And those ‘Words of the Day,’ and writing on the board how we feel in one word as soon as we come into class, and beginning class by closing our eyes to some music, and those communities names.  That’s up with all that?”

My answer echoed something Daniel Goleman and Ed Deci once asserted which I find over and over and over again to be true.  They said that success–true success, deep success, lasting success–and learning–deep and lasting learning–seems to be rooted more in a student’s “emotional” and/or “social” intelligence than in a test score or grade point average in academic subjects.  I would add that it’s also rooted more in a teacher’s “emotional” and/or “social” intelligence than in a scholarly resume, degree, and/or title.  That is, when students and professors learn quality of interpersonal relationships, have a feeling of purpose and passion for what they do both inside and outside of class, are given ownership of what they do, have an autonomy to make their own decisions, can draw on their strengths and strengthen their weaknesses, make a contribution to the well-being of others,  forge a connectedness to others, face their fears and find the power of their courage, they both perform at higher levels and achieve more.  That is, the “ordinary” students can achieve “extraordinary” things.  Or, in the academic parlance, supposedly average or mediocre “D” and “C” students can do “A” honors work.  It’s that broad learning how to live which permeates every facet of a person’s waking day as much as, if not more than, that more narrow and compartmentalized learning how to make a living.

So, I answered her question, “I am!  I’m behind it.  I am my ultimate teaching resource.  My attitude towards everything and everyone matters.  Whenever I come into class or talk with someone out of class, I struggle to be a ‘”T”ee ‘”T”otaler,’ to follow completely by my command to ‘T’each ‘T’o a ‘Tee.’  Don’t always succeed.  Already may even have screwed up once or twice, but I give it all I have all the ‘T’ime.”

She looked at me with a quizzically twisted face.  I smiled, knowing that having confused her I stirred her curiosity and got her attention.  So, I went on to explain, “By that, I mean I always see a bunch of things, a lot of ‘T’ words dancing across my mind and heart:   Treasure.  Transcend.  Touch. Transport. Take the Time. This moment. Trust.  Transform.  Today.  This. Truly everything.  This.  ‘Thusiasm.  I know, last two are stretches, but they belong on my list.  Anyway, these are my important “T’s” in teaching.  And, I consciously cross every one of them every day with every student.”

“How do you do that?  I’m thinking about becoming an education major after this year,”  she asked.

“Ah, four things.  First, realize you’re in the ‘people business.’  Second, be a ‘people person.’  Third, see a classroom as gathering of ‘sacred, noble, “ones.”‘  And, finally, heed the words of Mother Teresa, ‘I never look at the masses as my responsibility,’ she said. ‘I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time.’   So, you shine.  You see sacredness.  You love.  You are loving.  You care.  You are caring.  You respect.  You trust.  You are trustworthy.  You practice deep awareness of yourself and others.  You are fully alert to yourself and others.  You have an intense sense of otherness.  You are passionate.  You have faith.  You help.  You are helpful.  You feel alive, not just good.  You reach far and high.  You dream deep.  You empathize.  You sympathize.  You adjust.  You are flexible.  You are sincere.  You personalize.  You accept responsibility and don’t blame.  You honor.  You individualize.  You are compassionate.  You are highly attentive of yourself and others.  You smile.  You are kind.  You humanize.  You believe.  You listen.  You fight.  You are grateful.  You are humble.  You encourage.  You notice.  You see.  You never give up.  You support.  You have hope.  You energize.  You are energized.  You do all of this unconditionally.  All with no judgments.  All the time.  Every day. With everyone.  With each one.  No exception.  No explanation. No excuse.  Read my ‘Teacher’s Oath’ in the syllabus.  It’s all in there.  I’ll also send you a copy of my ‘To Be A Teacher’ poster.”

I didn’t tell her this: to the measure we wish to and can do this, to the extend we live by my “Teacher’s Oath” and my “To Be A Teacher,” we can make visible those persons who might never be seen by us, by others–and by themselves.  We help those in the valley elevate themselves to the summit tops.  We can help those in the shadows come out into the light.  Then, we have changed the world and altered the future.

Louis

God, these last few weeks have been a struggle.   Things have a way of arriving unannounced.  But, there is an upside to this inner and outer struggle.  It has made me look deeper into myself as a teacher and ask, “As a teacher, who am I?”  Here’s my answer.  If I am merely a classroom manager, I accept the status quo of a host of “I am.”    On the other hand, if I see myself as a classroom leader, I dispute the validity of the status quo and refuse to become like or submit to “the system” with a host of challenging and often annoying “You can become” and “You are better than that” and “You can do it.”  I don’t clutch “this is how it has always been done” so tightly that I can’t embrace newness.  As a teacher, I am a discriminating iconoclast.  I have a selective irreverence.  I am restlessness with the paralyzing “I can’t,” discontent with the atrophying “I am not,” unsatisfied with the halting “It’s too hard.”  My refusals to accept those fearfully disguised “no’s,” my beliefs in “yeses,” as Thomas Edison might have said, are the necessities for getting out of the ruts of complacency, certainty, resignation, sedentariness, and stasis–and even despair.  And, if you’re worrying about critics, about what “they” will think, well, they just prove you’re doing something worthwhile.

I mean, damn!  Rumi said, “Observe the wonders as they occur around you.”  Not to be filled with joy in that classroom is one of the great sins in academia.  In that classroom before us are potentials so many and so great we and they can’t imagine them. This is a place overflowing with possibilities. This is a place heaped with opportunities.  This is the future!  To know all that, to understand that, to be understood, my teacher’s eyes, mind, and especially heart, have to be like parachutes, for they function properly only when they are open.  And, when they are open–open to all without exception and without condition–they offer faith, hope, support, encouragement, and love.  I know when I am open, I am assured that I’ll never grow old; I may die of old age, but I’ll die young; and, my teaching will never get old.  We have to open our inner tap and let that faith, belief, hope, and love flow vibrantly out from us.  To succeed, we first have to believe in each student–in each student; we have to help each student–each student–believe.  No teacher has the right to give up on any student.  I’ll repeat that:  no teacher has the right to give up on any student. Wasn’t it Buddha who said, “If we could see the miracle in single flower clearly, our whole life would change?”  What if we saw such a miracle in a so-called “average student?”  What if we saw an angel walking before each student, proclaiming, “Make way!  Make way!  Make way for someone created in the image of God?”   A strong positive belief in a student will create more miracles than any “wonder” technology, publication, or grant.  That understanding has to be lived, not merely spoken. St. Francis of Assisi was right, it’s no use preaching unless our walking is our preaching.   After all, reputations are not built on what you say you should do or what you’re going to do.

If we fail to embrace the opportunity, we lose the prize; we lose the student.  We have to focus on that place, on the classroom, not just on the lab and archive and publishing house.  Why?  Well, “What the mind of man creates,” said Edison, “his character controls.”  Because that’s the prize:  to do whatever it takes–whatever it takes–to help each student open her or his eyes, mind, and heart so she or he can see where she or he will be, not where they have been or are; that there are no short cuts to any meaningful place; to help them see just how noble and sacred and valuable they are whatever their GPA, their gender, their religion, their race, their ethnicity, their sexual preference, their whatever; to help them see that living a life of integrity is the greatest lesson to learn; to help them to understand that the whole of existence is change and process, that life is change and process, and each of us is change and process; but, also understand that while achievement is not certain, failure is not final.  As I have said so often, we have to help them learn that they are “human becomings,” not just “human beings.

The most important thing I, as a teacher, can do in a classroom, then, is to do something that will outlast and go beyond both me, the physical confines of the classroom, the restrictions of the class subject, and time limits of the term.  And, that is to show that belief is more powerful than interest; that all in life is an experiment; that all in life is choice; that while you seldom get to choose how you die; you always choose how to live; that there is no guarantee and absolute security; that there is no perfection; that there is only opportunity and possibility; and that with self-confidence, self-esteem, self-respect, commitment, dedication, perseverance, and sweat supposedly average people can do the work of supposedly superior people.

Louis

About to head for the streets.  Been out of bed since 3:30, thinking, feeling, turned on before I turned the lights on, flipped out before I flipped the light switch, fired up.  No fear of waking Susie; I’m bacheloring this week while she sails the seas of the Caribbean with my Michael’s family and especially with our two grandmunchkins.

Today, now, is an opportunity of a lifetime.  Today will come to pass and I can’t let it pass me by.  It’s the first day of the Fall Semester, and, as the research says, I have only the first three minutes of each class to “grab” each student who comes through the door.  So, as Bob Fosse always said, “It’s showtime!”  It’s time to get up, get out, and get living with everything I have while I have it.  You know, to get my juices flowing, I was thinking about the last day of the Spring semester in one class.  It was closure, that day of class when we each openly reflect, “What did I get out of this class and what will I take with me?’  One of them asked me what the core of my teaching was.

I answered with a question, “Don’t you know by now?”

“Yeah, I think” he replied, “but just tell us.”

Without missing as beat, as I have often said, “Love, unconditional love, of each of you.”

They looked at me and listened, the puzzled stares and uneasiness with the word they first heard on the first day of that semester was still there.  One of  them then asked me, “Why?  Some of us really don’t deserve it the way we treated you and this class.”

I told him poetically, “When I love, I carry with me my own sunshine no matter the weather.  When it storms, I see the rain watering my flowers or imagine and feel the sun about the clouds.”

I remember them throwing a bunch of negative challenging “what ifs” at a me.  I parried,  “‘Unconditional’, no qualifications, no exceptions, no ‘buts.’  You don’t have to earn anything.  You have it.  It’s the starting line.”

Now they looked at me, still looking nervous and confused, as if I was some kind of nut they hadn’t yet cracked.  “I still haven’t ever heard any of my professors talk like that,” one of them said.  “Why is that so important?”

The question sounded as if I was an embarrassment for having uttered as something intellectually insulting as the “L” word.  Then, I  answered him in less poetic terms.  “Nothing steadies my mind, heart, and soul as steady, unconditional love.  Nothing demands more understanding, compassion, and passion.  There’s no multi-tasking with it because it demands that I give each of you my fullest attention; it focuses me; it makes me listen and see intently.   It holds my feet to the fire of my Teacher’s Oath. I remember going on to tell them that attention makes visible what I might never have seen.  “Sure, I get in your face so you can face yourself.  Sure, I kick you in your butts in the hope you’ll soon kick yourselves.  I know no one is perfect,” I told them.  “I don’t expect or demand it.  I’m no fool.  I’m not fooled by imperfection.  I don’t allow myself to be fooled by mistakes some of you have made into believing you are lesser than you are; I am not fooled by the dark images you have of yourselves.”  I continued to explain that I see their beauty when they feel ugly; I know they can be whole when they are broken; I know they are innocent when they feel guilty; I see their purpose when they are confused; I see their potential when they feel all is lost.  “When I love each student, where’s my limit,” I asked.  “Where’s the limit to my faith, hope, perseverance, and endurance?  Where’s the limit to my empathy and support and encouragement?  Where?  Love helps me to defeat cynicism, frustration, false expectation, and resignation.  What situation or person, then, can I not face and face down, when I make my work a labor of love and purpose?  When?  What?  Who?”

“So,” one of them had asked me, “you ask us to grade ourselves and you.  You have to give us a grade.  Grade yourself in this class.”

I thought for a few seconds.  With a mischievous smile, “Everything I’ve done is worthy of a ‘B.  They looked at me, stunned.  They thought I was going to give myself an “A” or that I was going to say that I, too, had made mistakes.  I did, but that’s not what I meant.  I continued and explained, emphasizing and slowing down at each time I came to a “B,” “‘Be’-cause I had to ‘be’ in the moment; ‘be’ willing; ‘be’ authentic; ‘be’ mindful; be’ aware; ‘be’ attentive; ‘be’ alert; ‘be’ hopeful; ‘be’-lieve; and, like I said, unconditionally ‘be’ in love.  With all that, I ‘be’-hold!”

On this yet to dawn first day of class, I think…  No, I know you don’t get what you wish for; you get what you love for, work for, and what you live for.  What I experience in the classroom, or anywhere at anytime with anyone for that matter, is how I consciously choose to live it.  My priorities. my values, aren’t what I espouse; they are what I live.  Like the first lines of my Teacher’s Oath, “I will give a damn about you in the class!  I will care! I will support! I will encourage! I won’t just mouth it.  I will live it!  Each day, unconditionally!”

Each day gives me an opportunity to make a difference, but I’ve got to work the opportunities.  Each day I rise, I rise to the challenges, opportunities, possibilities.  We, student and professor alike, would do well to skip the wishing and get to the living.  We can make now the time, this day the day, this moment the moment; we can make now that wishful when.  We can see much farther from mountain summit than we can from the valley.  We can transform our world in general and our world in the classroom specifically in an instant by the way we choose to see it. we more beauty we see, the more beautiful we are.  We can change problems into opportunities, anxiety into enthusiasm, and despair into determination if we raise our perspective.  The quality of what we see depends on the perspective from which we see it. We more beauty we see, the more beautiful we are.  And that perspective is entirely up to us.  We can choose to live from a constant and unassailable perspective of love which makes each day a wondrous and miraculous time, an inspiring time,  a very beautiful, special, loving, and lovely time.

Damn, I’m going to miss all this if I have to retire in December!

I wandered on campus Friday to check out and set up one of my classrooms for the coming semester.  A custodian was cleaning the carpets.  I stopped to chat with him.  He looked at me more than a tad stunned when I said with a slight pat on his back, “Thanks for keeping this place clean.  I for one really appreciate it.”

“I thank you for that.  No one has ever said that to me, especially a professor.  People act like I’m made of see-through glass.  Thank you for seeing me.”

This quiet morning I was thinking of something Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence, wrote.  He says, “Threats to our standing in the eyes of others are almost as powerful as those to our very survival.”  After I came home from my walk, with both that statement and the custodian teary eyes in mind, I was walking around the master bedroom complex of our house, thinking about what it took for me to add the 700 square feet of these three rooms by myself some thirty odd years ago:  designing, cement work, carpentry, stone work, insulation, roofing, plumbing, tiling, electricity, insulation, plastering, painting, wall papering, sheet rocking, etc, etc, etc..  And, once again, I realized how much I admire the people who work with their hands–and their minds–a competent carpenter or gardener or auto mechanic or electrician or plumber or painter who may not have college degree, who maybe didn’t even graduate high school, who can masterfully wield a hammer or wrench or screwdriver or paint brush.  I admire them far more than I do an incompetent philosopher who has his head in the clouds without having his feet on the ground or, worse, his smug nose lifted high.  I so honor anyone if he does his work skillfully with excellence and with integrity more than I do anyone whose work is shoddy and less than honest, however eminent that person claims to be.  A “Dr.” doesn’t make anyone superior to a “Ms” or “Mr.”  Letters like “Ph.D” or “LLD” or “MA” do not make someone more important or superior to someone who doesn’t have that scrambled alphabet trailing his surname and introducing his given name.

I look around at my campus and I see secretaries, clerks, cooks, grounds keepers, police, electricians, carpenters, locksmiths, painters, plumbers, custodians, garbage collectors, computer technicians, exterminators, mail people, and a host of other “see-through glass” people.  Too often ignored. Too often sneered at or browbeaten.  Too often laughed at.  Too often passed without a “hello.” Too often not offered a grateful “thank you.” Too often invisible as if they were cellophane.  Too often demeaned and denigrated.  The problem is, as Goleman says, that there is nothing more precious than the feeling that you matter, that we contribute to the value of the whole, and for most that we’re recognized for it.   Feeling that you’re genuinely appreciated and cared about is the greatest energizer of most people. Each person is important to our university community, so very important, but not everyone sees that.  Yes, important.  Without them, our lights would go out, our drains would clog, our waste baskets would overflow, our campus would reek, our campus would be unsafe, our grounds would be unseemly, our computers would go down, our students would go hungry, our communication would break down, ants and cockroaches would overrun us, and god know what else would happen.  There’s more to my campus than just administrators, faculty, and students.  Everyone has a vital and different role to play without whom this institution would grind to a halt and fall into disrepair.  Each one of them deserves respect, not just for the job they do, but just because they’re good, hard working people.

Be consciously and vocally appreciative.  It doesn’t cost anything to say a kindly and acknowledging, “hello,” or “thank you.”

Louis

I’m musing.

I love sitting in silence and solitude by the koi pond listening to the soothing waterfalls and watching the smooth movement of the koi, forcing myself to come terms with the time and place I’m in.  It creates a peaceful  awareness that life is being renewed every moment, that change is a constant.  For me its a time of relaxation when there are no battles being fought, when fears and anxieties dissipate, when pains ease.  It’s a time when I can focus on what is good, right, true, meaningful, significant.  It’s a time when worry and doubt  are replaced by joy, love, living, imagination, creativity.  It’s a time that reminds me not to let the worse of life get to me and get a hold of me, but to let the best of life shine through me.  I particularly may need that now, for I may be put into a corner I don’t want to be in and may have to make a decision I don’t want to make.  But, that’s life, and it is whatever I make of it.

On the surface, life is filled with a heck of a lot swirling eddies of adventure, activity, change, confusion, excitement, joy, and frustration. It has it’s ups and downs.  It throws you change-ups, sliders, and curve balls.  Trust me, I know that only too well, especially now.  No one can drive you crazier or make you happier than someone or something you love.  That is true for me with Susie, with my sons, with my grandmunchkins, with the students, teaching, and with life in general.  There’s a gordian knot of enchantment and pain, of ecstasies and agonies, of serenity and disturbance, amusing chatter and serious discussion, that no one can separate.  But, underlying it all, I find abiding peace and goodness that can never be denied if I joyfully travel life with an inner and outer smile.  I am alive and kicking.  I am living.  I am not homesick for places I haven’t been to.  So, I am obliged to act like it rather than lethargically lying down and playing dead.  No door will open unless I first knock.  That means I am here to make things happen by vagabonding and practicing the art of travel:  questioning, learning, loving, adventuring, exploring, and experiencing. When a problem comes along, I am supposed to solve it. When an opportunity appears, I expect myself to jump right into it. When conditions change, I must adapt. When I encounter beauty, I enjoy it. When I run into hardship, I survive it.  This is life and what it’s all about.  Sure, life has it’s ups and downs but it’s that attitude that will stop or at least slow your ups from getting pulled down and will more easily pull up your downs.

I am presently 71 years young, soon to celebrate my 72nd birthday on November 1, All Saints Day (my Susie says that if there was ever a contradiction, this is it). I may be in what others call my “sunset years,” but, damn, I live only “sunrise days.”  I always say that while I may be getting older, I refuse to get old.  A life needs a reason to be lived just as a Random Thought needs a reason to be written.  They’re considered acts.  They need a “why to persist,” not a desperate hunt for a “way to persist.”  By that I mean I’ve learned that I only grow old when I stop growing and changing, when I stop filling the years with significance.

Free Forums Press just published the fourth volume of collect Random Thoughts, subtitled “The Passion of Teaching,” or what I call in the introduction “hokey pokey teaching.”  But, for me, authentic success is not that addition to my book shelf or another line in my resume.  Real accomplishment can’t be measured by what I consume or own.  You see, I firmly believe that success, true achievement, lies not in having this or this, not in getting this or that, not having this or that experience, not in having done this or that, not having a longevity.  True success lies in knowing that things will tear, rust, crumble, and fade; it’s knowing, as it is said, that if you love things, you’ll never have enough things; it’s knowing, as it is also said, that it’s pointless to gain the whole world and lose yourself.  The energy I use to effectively get things done doesn’t come from things; it comes from the purpose inherent in my vision that is inside me.  I have learned if I have that energy, I don’t have to look for someone or something to motivate or inspire me.  The more I am driven and guided by purpose and significance, the more energy I have to draw on to do more and more significant things, and express my own specialness.

Success for me is living an honest life rather than staged authenticity, of living well rather than just doing well, of living richly rather than getting rich, of personally buy into rather than merely materially being bought, of living uncompromisingly each day as the person I am and as the person I am becoming, of living Emerson’s “independence of solitude” in the midst of the crowd.  For me, true success is “rocking it,” to be quick and constantly in motion with an unshakeable faith in myself, to embrace each moment as it comes, living to the steady beat of the active pursuit of excellence, to have persistent and positive expectations.  I see true success as having the dynamic of love as the top priority, of giving love, and of living love each day.  I accept true success only as living unbending, steady, decisively, courageously, and unafraid against the inevitably occurring winds, chills, and darknesses.  True success is being the person who knows what is significant, as the person who lives from his heart and soul, as the person who lives honestly, as the person who has a joy of life, falls in love with life, and lives it fully each and every day.

Last month I told you that my daily motto is “Cogito ergo semper gratiam habebe”:  I think therefore I am always grateful.  I told you even earlier that my formula for effective action is K.I.S.S.E.D.: keep it simple and significant every day.”  Those “formulae” for living each day, along with my daily “Word To Live By Today,” my “Teacher’s Oath,” my “Ten Commandments For Teaching,” and my perspective on all aspects of life, my definition of success, rest on a firm foundation of M68ED:  “Micah 6:8 Every Day!”

Louis