SELF-AWARENESS

A professor called me today out of the blue to ask how I stay constantly serene.  She was ready to tear her hair out because of “these students.”  People can get bald by all that end-of-the-term stuff. if they allow it.   We talked a while.  I thought I’d share a thumbnail sketch of my side of the conversation.  The first of my five-part answer was, “Thank goodness I don’t have to deal with that uneducational stuff like finals and grades anymore.”  My second part was, “I don’t buy into the recruiting and fundraising PR images of pretty smiling faces of self-motivated mini Ph.D.s walking walking hand-in-hand with totally student oriented faculty on a pristine campus that create false expectations.   See the real individual people in the classroom and on a real campus.”  My third was:  “I never disrespect a student in thought or action, whether in “I didn’t mean anything by it” or “it’s just fun talk” among colleagues or non-academic friends.  Never.  I have an unshakeable–unshakeable–faith in, belief in, hope for, and love of each student–even if they don’t have it for themselves.  Fourth, I told her, “Remember what Carl Rogers, the psychologist, said.  To paraphrase him,  ‘You can’t teach anyone; you can only help him help himself find his unique abilities, talents, and potential.'”

My final part was, “I was not born in Assisi.  A saint I’m not.”  But, I told her that I don’t have unreal expectations.  I know nothing is perfect, not everything will go my way, not everything will work out, and not everything will go right.   I accept that.  I accept that I will screw up; I’m ready for things to go awry.  And, it usually works out.   I told “usually” because I experience emotional downers.  I can get bored, be disappointed, be sad, be frustrated, and be angry.   But, when I do, I usually catch myself quickly and don’t allow those feeling to get me or become me.  Part of the reason is that I have learned to use them to teach me more about the serenity prayer: what I cannot control, what I can control, and to know the difference.

Another reason is to understand that no accomplishment, nothing rewarding, occurs without travail.  What I told this professor was that all the facets of mindfulness–alertness, awareness, attentiveness, otherness–don’t offer superpowers of zeroing in only on joy and serenity.  It’s a step-in/step-back being aware of, noticing, and acknowledging the emotions I am experiencing.

Sounds good, doesn’t it.  Well, I don’t always initially follow my own philosophy.  I didn’t the last semester before my retirement.   When I felt a tad defenseless against a subtle age discrimination sneak attack that made me decide to retire a year and a half ago, I was angry.  I almost lost it for that entire last semester.  I didn’t want to let go; I didn’t want to go quietly into the still night.  I was not a model of peacefulness or calmness; I wasn’t carrying a grateful smile.   To be honest, and Susie will verify this, I was a growling bear.  This sudden, unexpected, unwanted letting go was almost too much for me.  This was one class offered by the school of hard knocks I did not want to attend.

Thank goodness for mindfulness!  I discovered that I was ignoring Rumi’s chiding:  “Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?” “Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open….?  “Why should I stay at the bottom of a well, when a strong rope is in my hand?”  Now, I didn’t have some quick fix to walk through that door or climb that rope to make my anger–or fear–dissipate.  What I did have was mindfulness.  I constantly questioned myself, asking what’s going on?  Why am I angry?  At what am I angry?  At whom am I angry?  And so, as I constantly asked all that of myself, I slowly found the door knob and the rope, and the inner gold.

You see, mindfulness is a mood minder; it is also a mood reminder.  It has taught me to ask myself constantly what I need, over what I have control, what I need to leave behind, what I need to look forward to, and what I must do to go on.   Denial only makes uncomfortable feelings unmanageable.  Avoidance leads only to getting lost.  Mindfulness allows me to admit, acknowledge, identify, and deal with my emotions.  It’s like, as Rumi said, when I start walking a path, the path appears.   This allows me to see myself more clearly, and find a path of action rather than mindlessly fling about reacting.

Goodness knows I can’t escape the twist and turns or ups and downs of life anymore than anyone else can.  If nothing else, an unexpected epiphany, cancer, a massive cerebral hemorrhage, and an unwanted retirement have shown me that.  When we can learn to hit those curve balls life throws at us, however,we can see they’re all really ugly ducklings by learning from them, making our lives more graceful, richer, more interesting, more exciting, more meaningful, more wonderful, and more grateful.  If we learn to “fall up” by “falling down,” we see Rumi was right:  “God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches you by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly — not one.”

Louis

ODE TO JOY

I was still thinking again about Jane as I got involved in a Linkedin discussion group about teaching.  I could hear echoes of Edgar Allan Poe:  “Blame, blame, blame.  The tintinnabulation of blame, blame, blame.”  All I can say is that when some academics, far too many academics, say “oh, those students,” they get less a than subtle snarl on their face, or slump in self-pitying resignation, or annoyed grimace without a demonstration of one scintilla of empathy.  Some, say the word “student” with such a cursedness that they should have their mouths washed with soap.

You know, our actions are actions are demonstrations of our values.  We are steeped in our imagination.  We are wrapped in our own mantra.  Every step we take is muscled by our perception.  Every breathe we take fills our lungs with assumption.  Our opinion of students is not a description of any student.  It’s a reflection of ourselves.  It’s a window into our own character, not the students’.. I don’t think pessimistic moaning and groaning changes anything or gets us anywhere except that they sap our strength, commitment, perseverance, and determination.  Too often, the seeds we plant in our perception, assumption, and imagination that spring to life in the day-to-day reality of our classroom experience are choking weeds.  And, thus we so narrow and degrade ourselves with each “ugh.”

Too many profs have a myopic tendency to blame poor performing students on being among the “letting anyone in” or the “don’t belongs” who are diluting academic rigor.  Too many academics, when they see a student in need, their first impulse is to reproach rather than help, to resist, reject or condemn any help as coddling, to attack second chances as watering down, to reject hope as fluffy, to oppose faith as soft, to criticize love as touchy-feely and weak.           Sometimes I wonder if resume, tenure, degrees act as eroding agents on compassion and empathy.  Sometimes I wonder if the length of a resume lengthens the distance between them and students.  Sometimes I wonder if the higher the degree the more blurred their vision from on high.  Sometimes I wonder if the amount of scholarship academics write quickens their inclination to write off students.

What would happen, then, if we choked the choking weeds?  What would happen if we felt a little of life’s goodness in the classroom and let that goodness be magnified throughout our being.  Do you know what would happen if we assumed the best instead of the worse, if we stopped assuming disappointment, gave the classroom a place in our lives?  Well, let me tell you a little secret.   The only things that matters in that classroom is how much you have chosen to matter in a student’s life and that you become more meaningful to both yourself and each student by giving and serving.

And, therein lies the real secret of all those teachers who make a difference.  They offer helping hands rather than pointing fingers.  The name of their game is to be game, not to blame.  They smile rather than sneer.  They regard each student as a possible.  They’re opportunists in the best sense of the word.  They stir up love, not judgment.  They smile, not sneer.  They wrap their love around each student, whatever happens, and make good things happen.  Their imagination is anchored in belief, hope, faith, and love.  They use each moment to express them.  They are a force of goodness, and live that goodness each moment.  They are beautiful in their own way, and that special beauty is a gift to each student.  And, when they say, “Oh, those students,” it is an ode to joy; it is uttered with a warm and embracing smile, not a cold and pushing away grimace.  They wake up each morning with an inner light that is brighter than the light of the day.  They walk enveloped in an aura of joy.  They are out and out optimists.  They’re a source of light.

If we truly want to judge a teacher, judge him or her by his or her hope.  If we truly want to measure a teacher, measure him or her by the size of his or her dream.  To the teacher who dreams and hopes and believe, and acts on them, there is no such person as impossible, untouchable, and hopeless.

You see, most students are touched most by those teachers who dream and hope and believe the most of them.

Louis

ACCEPTANCE, NOTICE, QUESTION

Back to this student, whom I’ll call Jane, who got me to thinking about “suffering,” “experience” and “reflection.”  Jane said something profound without really knowing it until I told her.  She said, “When I felt you noticed me, you dared me.  You dared me to notice myself and not just accept who I thought I was.  You dared me to ask the questions ‘who does he see,’ ‘who should I see,’ and ‘who am I?  I still do to this day almost everyday to be what you called a ‘human becoming.’  And, dammit your words from Yoda echo within me so deep I can’t get rid of them.  I don’t want to.  It helps me to deal with whatever comes my way.”

She was talking of two quotes of Yoda to Luke that I wrote for brief five minute discussion on the whiteboard as “Words For The Day”:  “Do or Do not.  There is no try.”  “Luke:  ‘I can’t believe it.’ Yoda:  ‘That is why you fail.'”

Acceptance.  Notice.  Question.  This trilogy, in a very intense way, is both the problem of and answer to transformation.  Let’s take acceptance.  Acceptance is a barricade.  It is a kind of sleepwalking zombie-ness. It’s being complacent about yourself.  It’s a conforming acquiescence.  It is a kind of resistance, a sort of fear, an unwillingness to open oneself up to a reality other than the one you have become accustomed.  Sure, acceptance is friendly, feels comfortable, is comforting, is known, is safe and secure.  But, it is also blinding and unthinking and numbing.

Now notice.  Notice stirs the waters.  It throws light on the dark corner.  It is a dare no longer to be apathetic to yourself by being seen and by seeing.  It is a dare to no longer go unnoticed.  It is the dare to see your own beauty, your own sacredness, your own nobility, your own uniqueness.  It is a dare to sense the possibility of change, of learning how to ask the same question to both yourself and others:  “who does he see?”  “who are you?”

And, now the question.  Question, particularly “who are you pilgrim,” is a form of awakening from a sleep.  It initiates the naming of your halting fear.  It is the road to belief, faith, hope, and love.  It’s that question, or any question, that shatters stagnation and gets things moving.  It’s the question that raises desire.  It’s the question that is the sound to challenge the silence of acceptance.  It’s the question that shatters security created by acceptance.  It’s the question that creates alertness, awareness, attentiveness.  It’s the question that  throws down the mindful gauntlet to mindlessness.  It’s the question that creates uniqueness.  It’s the question that challenges an acquiescent consensus of acceptance.  It’s the question that arouses a life deadened by acceptance. It’s essence is seeing, thinking, and sharpening.

Without the question, that rising of desire, that self-awareness of how things might become, nothing changes, barriers aren’t broken, and nothing transforms.  As Jane discovered, it converts a static “human being” into a pilgriming “human becoming.”  It unties the halting “not” in your “cannot,” and kicks you in your dynamic “can.”  Those reflective questions Jane is constantly asking, as we all should, are a dawning of self-knowledge, self-development, self-arousal, self-inspiration and self-awareness that breaks through the night of acceptance.  It carries her into new worlds and thereby expands her world.

That is what an education should be all about.

Louis

ON SEEING

I had a touching and gratifying conversation with a past student that I won’t get into.  All I’ll say is that one of the truest things in teaching, or anything for that matter, is having a serene feeling of joy and fulfillment in your heart that you can’t really put into words.  That inner peacefulness is not arrived at by being detached, uninvolved, or merely doing nothing. On the contrary, it is attained by doing substantive and significant things with a calm selfless service.  It is the belief that you have a huge potential to alter the future, that knowing how doing little things can have huge consequences, that 24 point headlines are the result of the four point details, and that it’s the little things that really make a big difference.   That means doing everything everyday with purpose, love, compassion, patience, passion, empathy, and genuine tolerance. It means doing it with a playfulness, joy, and enthusiasm.   It’s not just a job; it’s a belief system; it’s living your whole life that way.

This student showed me that the most considerate actions are so often the gently shaking ones, that one of the primary things that makes the people begin to transform is the experience of being seen.  Its a very intimate feeling that someone is really seeing you and seeing where you really live. It’s from such sight from which comes empathy.  Without such sight, do you know how many manifestations of  nobility, sacredness, beauty, and loveliness we miss every day?

Understand that there’s a kind of randomness all around us over which we have little if any control.  If nothing else, in our classes we have no control over who is sitting before us.  But our responses to that randomness are not random.  It’s our context.   The course of all aspects of our life depends on how we react to those possibilities, opportunities, challenges, and potentials that the randomness offers to us.  I’ve said it many times.  If you are possessed with an alertness, awareness, attentiveness, and otherness–all those components of mindfulness–you will find that things happen.

I don’t think these feelings and actions, however, are decisions made at a particular moment in response to a particular person in a particular situation.  They are the kind of person who you are, who is raising the unconscious to a conscious level, who has those perspectives, possesses those feelings, make those decisions, and takes those actions.

Louis