Well, classes are beginning today at my University.  Even though I won’t be in the classroom, last week I was asked by a friend, if I could help a student learn one thing, just one thing, and only one thing, what would it be.  I’d been thinking about that, even while watching the NFL playoffs:  just one thing.  Not sure I can.  My problem is that I had merged together myself, students, course content, and life, and had exposed students to a bunch of “one things.”  I wanted them to see that everything we did in class was relevant and meaningful to their lives.  I wanted to help students transform their thoughts, attitudes, and feelings about themselves and others, what they learned, and what they should do with them.  I had  done this in eight major ways.  The first was to put myself out there in a “What do you want to know about me” exercise in which I would answer any and all personal and professional questions about me and my life experiences.  Second, was to do an exercise I called, “The Chair,” which became one of the major “how it works” themes of the course, Third, to give students a constant social experience which they could relate to both the subject matter and their lives, I insisted that they form communities of three and four according to three rules:  they must be strangers to each other, the communities they form must be gender and racially mixed.  Fourth, every day I’d write “Schmier’s saying of the day” on the whiteboard, something like Yoda’s “Try not.  Do or do not. There is no try.”  Then, in a brief five or ten minute discussion we, they and me, would relate the saying to the people about whom they’re studying at the time and to ourselves with a “how would so and so respond?  How do you reply?”  Fifth, everything we did in and out of class, everything without exception, had a reflective transforming and relevance character:  the method of acquiring and accumulating information, the manner of its use, the application of it all to their own lives.  Sixth, my reading, learning from, and reacting to their daily, confidential, computerized journal entries.  Seventh, I significantly minimized grade getting and emphasized learning.  And finally, there were those constant student initiated “I gotta talk with you” or my initiated “let’s talk” personal, face-to-face sessions I had with students.  There was other things we did, but these were the major activities in my wholeness approach by offering lessons both in the subject matter and life.

Now, every time I sifted through all those doings in and out of class, as well as the other “stuff,” done by both students and myself, every time I struggled to come up with that “one thing,” a seminal thing, a foundation thing, my friend wanted, I thought of the lesson in my massive cerebral hemorrhage that should have killed or seriously impaired me, but miraculously did neither: death is a split second from any of us, but so is another moment filled with opportunities and possibilities.  We don’t control or are in charge as much as we want to believe.  I’ve had a few speed bumps, a few rough spots, a few curve balls, a few ups and downs, a few highs and lows, and a few twists and turns in my life and career.   I’ve had unforeseen, unexpected, uncontrolled moments of what I call “divine timing” or “you-just-don’t-ask”:  taking a fallback class I didn’t want with Dr. Viault in my sophomore year; meeting Susie on a blind date neither one of us wanted; adopting Robby because of a series of inexplicable events; an unexpected research discovery which made my career take a sharp left turn; my epiphany which made my life take at a sharp right turn; a bout with cancer; my cerebral hemorrhage; my unexpected, unwanted, and very reluctant retirement.

When I had my epiphany, I suddenly found myself faced with my life and was startled by the rare experience of becoming intensely and painfully aware of the moment-by-moment passage of my past life; when my brain exploded sixteen years later, I suddenly found myself faced with death.  I should have died.  I didn’t. It was as sobering.  There, on that fateful day in the autumn of 2007, once again, it all flashed before me and has since stayed with me:  all that I materially had done in life, all that professionally I accomplished in life, all that I and Susie accumulated in life, could have disappeared in a blink of an eye.  All my degrees, all my publications and grants, all my Random Thoughts, all my renown would prove to be naught in a snap of the fingers.  It was all so temporary, all so transitory.  But, the pain and happiness of those experiences was a layer upon layer of mindful responsibility that life offers us a series of second chances after chances after chances as gifts too precious to waste by not living.  At the same time, they were, to say the least, increasingly uplifting inner joyful awarenesses.

One thing to teach students?  Here is my simple “first” foundation upon which rest my many other one things:  Stop counting on stuff.  Stop counting up your stuff.  Instead, live a life that counts.  Live so each and every second of each minute of each and every hour of each and every day of each and every month of each and every year that we are privileged to live counts!  How many of us have heard reports of people who have died in the forest fires last summer to save stuff.  Or, whose life was shattered to extent of some committing suicide when they lost stuff.  When I think of that, I shake my head in saddness.  It’s not the stuff in your wallet, hanging on the wall, parked in your driveway, paying the mortgage on, resting in your bank account that matter.  It’s not the stuff that you can measure, chart, manage, analyze, test, compute, even explain that matter.  One thing to teach students?  Cure yourself of your addiction by getting off the stuff of stuff.  One thing to teach students?  My answer to my friend was, “The same one thing I learned I work to offer to students to learn:  live what matters.  Live “below the surface,” not on it.  Stop envying, stop collecting, stop hoarding, stop scurrying around, stop chasing after, stop hustling, stop cutting corners or even cheating, stop not noticing, stop not acknowledging, stop being disconnected, stop so everything and everyone around you is no longer a blur.  Life is so much more beautiful, brighter, greater, and richer than the material riches you can amass if your coffers are filled with love, kindness, happiness, purposefulness, meaningfulness, friendship, and service.  Acknowledge the presence of others, hear them say, “we are here,” rest your eyes on them, open your heart to them, shrink the distance between you and them, experience the intense shivering of the wellspring of communal intimacy, make something wonderful and exciting of it all, share the gifts of life, and extend a benevolent hand and touch another.”

There are other related “one things,” but enough for now.

Louis