An aside that’s really an inside.  I just sent a shortened version of this message to a colleague in Hawaii on how I am handling retirement:

So, to answer your question as briefly as I can. As I told a student who asked if I miss the classroom, while I didn’t stampede to retirement, I still practice what I call “the art of self-arousal.” Has nothing to do with sex. It has everything to do with being 72 years young!  I’ve learned that I do not grow old simply by living a certain number of years. I grow old only when I stop filling those years with purpose, significance, and newness.  It has everything to be the sculptor or painter of my own life.  It has everything to do with going beyond merely intrinsic, self-motivation.  It has to do with touching the lives of others.  It has to do with making the best of what I have now, not what I had. You see, I’m not going to dwell on what it used to be like or that I miss the students.  I’ve learned that regrets are something that hold you back and keep you looking over your shoulder. I live forward in my “now.” I love being Louis Schmier; I love being around me; I love whoever Louis Schmier will become in the future. I love being friend to my dear friends.  I love being Susie’s husband; I love being Michael’s and Robby’s dad; I love being grandpa to my grandmunchkins.

I never thought I would ever retire. My dream was to drop dead in the classroom at the ripe young age of 90 while listening to a fabulous student project presentation. But, I don’t think of myself as retired. I’m not the retiring type.  I think of myself more as an electrician who is rewiring myself. How many times have I said that I know I can’t rock while idly rocking in a rocking chair. So, to use the shopworn saying, I’m constantly using emotional and spiritual Roundup to kill the grass that might grow under my feet and the moss that might gather on my rock.  Someone once said that happiness does not come from the way life is; it comes from the way you choose to see, embrace and live life as it is.  How true, instead of holding on in vain to a mournful “alas,” I put the new happiness of “wow” into what is now.   How does it go:  let go of dusk’s setting sun and grab hold of the rising sun of a new dawn?

I am an interesting guy with a ton of interests. I don’t have to look for things to do. Sure I don’t fish, play golf or bridge or mahjong. I’m presenting sessions on college teaching at major conferences; I’m developing a consultancy on teaching for anyone who would have me on their campus and listen to what I have to say and how I put my money where my vision is; I’m building a new website; I’ve got a new Facebook page; I’m collecting my Random Thoughts and have enough to self-publish seven volumes; I’m planning out a book on how I taught the Holocaust course; I’m finally publishing my history of Valdosta’s early Jewish community, and it should be out in a couple of months; I’m an avid flower gardener; I’m a fix-it-upper; I’m designing a water fountain and Japanese garden for the backyard; I and Susie will travel the world. I will spoil my grandmunchkins rotten through and through. I create, imagine, and occasionally sculpt. I exercise daily; every other day, I fast walk five miles with 100 yard sprints every quarter mile, all of which averages out to 12 minute miles; every other day I do a weightlift workout with 10 lb dumbbells to keep my upper body trim; every day I mediate, usually with my flowers. So, I keep myself in mental, spiritual, and physical shape.

Why? If I had to pare down the core of my outlook on life, on every part of life, on everything that guided me in the classroom, that would be: love. If I had to give a one-minute commencement address to graduating students, or if I had the courage to give a one minute teaching workshop to faculty, it would go something like this: “Love, love, love, love. Be a poster person for love. Love loving. Love life. Love yourself. Love others. Love being loved by others. Love serving others. Love unconditionally. Love everyday. Do what you love doing and love what you do. Become the person you truly love becoming. Be with someone you love and love being with, and be with someone who loves you and loves being with you. You’ve leaped over the learning bar. Now go out and raise high your loving bar. Get into the flow of love and let everything you think, feel, and do flow from it. Let love direct and energize you. Trust me. Do that and you’ll find a life at its best. Don’t, and you’ll be one miserable puppy. That’s it. Now, let’s get out the hell out of here as fast as we can, and party.”

Coming to think of it, this answer is not an aside.  Without true love, as a line in the theme song in Alfie said, we merely are.  So, it’s on point for everything in life, especially in the classroom and with students.

Louis

Friday I hit the inky streets.  My feet had heaviness to them.  It was the morning of Susie’s back surgery.   I wasn’t so much worried about the surgery itself.  After all, the hospital had just been rated the #1 spinal center in Georgia.  I just wanted her angelic smile to replace the grimaces brought on by excruciating sciatic pain after the cyst on her lower spine was excised.

You know, a good five-mile fast walk does more good for the soul than all the doctors and medicines in the world.  But, I didn’t know how much of a balm it was to be.

So, there I was, on the back half of my five mile walk, the morning star we call the sun was coming over the horizon, walking up the hill at a good twelve minute a mile clip, putting the ghosts of worry on the run.  Then, I saw a sleek young lady coming over the rise approaching me at a good running clip.  We passed each other, smiled, gave a slight acknowledging wave, and said a breathy “good morning” to each other.  Then, I heard a “Dr. Schmier” from behind and before I knew it, she was walking next to me.

We talked on the walk. “You don’t remember me.  I’m Alice.  I was in your first year history class seven years ago as a freshman.”

We started talking.  She told me about herself:  married, mother, and nurse.  I told her I had retired last December 1st, about my writings and travelings, about coming out with a book in a couple of months, and care taking of family members over the past six months.  When she asked, “How are you these days,”

I said.  “Trying not to think about my wife who’s having lower back surgery this morning.”

On the move, after I told about Susie’s condition and not liking in the slightest seeing her in pain, and hoping–“incysting”– the operation rid her of pain, she reached out and softly touched my wet arm.  I turned my face towards her.  She had a reassuring “all will be well” smile on her face.  No words.  There was nothing matter-of-fact in either her hand or face.  No expected etiquette.  Just sincerity.  Then, she hit with a ray of light that brought a sweet taste of love to the dawn.

She said something like, and don’t hold me to a word for word accuracy.  I don’t usually carry a stenographer’s pencil and pad around when I’m on the streets.  “I guess it’s time to thank you,” she said.  “Your course was probably the most important one I took in college.  It made me the kind of nurse I am today.  No, more than that, the kind of person I am today, the kind of wife and mother I am today.  I’ll say it:  you changed my life during those fifteen weeks.  You probably don’t remember this, but I do.  I was a confused little freshman.  My parents wanted me to go into the family business.  I didn’t and didn’t know what to do.  I wrote about it in my journals.  You wrote back to those entries.  We talked about my future and I told you I want to be like you and you said, ‘You’ve got to walk your own road.  Be like you, not me, after you discover who you are.’  I told you I wanted to go into a people business and do some good, not just some retail store, so I was looking at teaching and nursing.  You told me, and I remember your words exactly, ‘If you become a teacher practice “carefull–with two ‘Ls'”–teaching,’ but if you decide to become a nurse think of yourself going into the ‘healthcaring business,’ not just the ‘healthcare business.’  I remember you emphatically saying, ‘Whatever you decide to become, don’t ‘thingify’ it. You told me not to lose sight of people, to notice them, to listen to them, just as I want others to do with me.  I remember you telling me to always observe the golden rule:  to treat others, to feel about them, to think about them as I would want them to do the same to me.  I thought at the time that you were bringing the church into our class.  You told me not to lose the crucial feel, a sense of special presence, for people.  How did you say it, ‘Never overlook the critical part off whatever you decide to do: the complex, mysterious, sacred, and poetic human being.’ I’m not sure I understood everything you said at the time, but I do now, and I’ve been doing that ever since in everything throughout my life.  I never stop hearing those words every time I enter a room or talk with fellow nurses.  Sometimes they and the doctors think I’m a pain, but you taught me that nursing was more than needles, IVs, procedures, charts, treatments, medications, and protocols.  It is about people and about first understanding each of them, their fears and hopes; that nursing and education are a as much an art and calling as they are know-how; that they’re all about the patient or student, not the nurse or doctor or teacher, not the hospital or university.  You taught me by modeling that the art  that nursing is love, that how I treat a patient can be just as powerful a medicine as what he swallows or what goes into his veins.  What was it you said about a kind word or a soft touch?  You were right.  Kindness, compassion, tenderness, understanding, respect, and just to sincerely listen are the best comforting things you can give patients.  You taught me that they are so vital in what I do.   You taught me to be more than technical savy, as you put it, more than an ‘animated hypodermic needle,’ but to be ‘people savy’ even more.  Now, because of you, I don’t just focus on doing no harm; I concentrate more on doing good. It’s all because of you.  So, I just want to say ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’  for helping me to make myself who I am and will become.”

I looked over as beads of sweat poured into my eyes.  My vision was blurred, but I saw the embodiment of my vision as clear as a bell.  But, before I could say a word, she said with a smile, “You’re slowing me up.” She turned and continued her run while I continued my walk in the opposite direction.

Alice didn’t give me a chance to say anything.  Maybe she meant it to be that way.  Anyway, she was an added morning star to the sun.  And, I felt a comfort in my heart.  But, I also began to wonder how many people, in this case teachers and nurses and physicians, are in cardiac arrest.  They don’t practice with their heart.  Why do so many people think they can separate a person’s spirit from her or his body, focusing on the latter and ignoring the former, not dealing with the whole human being?   Why do so many academics think it’s all about, and only all about content, technology, and technique, or what the jargon calls “pedagogy.”  Suddenly, up popped images of a final plenary at the Lilly-South conference on teaching in February that touted an “new” approach in the classroom called “T-Pack” that was so “people-less.”  But, that’s the rest of the story..

Louis