Susie and I have gotten the Avalon back from the auto body shop. Sitting in the driveway cosmetically brand spanking new, it refreshed visions of that sudden high speed sideswiped hit-and-run, a spinout at 75 mph, and coming to rest on the highway’s shoulder a few feet from the steep embankment. I find there’s great meaning in coming face to face once again with the fragility of life. First, it was my epiphany, then it was cancer, then it was a massive cerebral hemorrhage, then it was this near-deadly accident, and now it’s very serious family medical crises in Boston. The fragility of life, however, says you can’t dwell there chained in by angst. You have to find a way to inner serenity and go on if you are to grasp purpose and meaning in the middle of this mess. You know I find that peacefulness, whether induced by my walks or by working my flower garden or by just sitting at the koi pond listening to the water falls and watching the graceful sweep of the koi, is a powerful force. It enables you to step back and view the scenery, to hear the sounds through the chattering noise and static, to discover what really matters, to feel the miraculous energy of life, to rediscover the course to an uplifting meaning and purpose. Serenity takes you beyond limiting wants, beyond fear, beyond frustration, beyond resignation, beyond anxiety. It takes you to places where you discover abundance that you didn’t think existed.
That is why I titled my recent published collection of Random Thought “Faith, Hope, Love.” They offer that gift of pause. Yesterday morning, before I went out for my walk, while my angel was sleeping, I picked up a bar of soap and wrote “Love you” on her bathroom mirror. Faith, hope, and love are choices we make from moment to moment that free us from life’s frenetic fire drills. They are the compasses for noticing, discovery, meaning, and purpose. They let us be ourselves or search for our true self. They instill a passion for people. They are the foundations for happiness and satisfaction, for happiness and satisfaction does not rest in doing what you like; they rest in liking whatever you do. They take education beyond credentialing. They make education the making of the person while she or he is being trained and credentialed. I know, my real education is not found in the credentials of either my degrees or my scholarly resume. It began with my transforming epiphany in 1991. It was then I began to see what I was thinking, feeling, and doing; how I should and could do it all differently; and, how I should and could make that change my way of life.
Education should always, then, embody four “beautiful questions” whose honest answers ask us to step back and take the long view: “Do I truly take real pleasure in my teaching?” “Am I invigorated, are my creative juices energized by such work?” “What does it all mean?” “What is the purpose of it all?” The answers have to do with how we perceive each student and ourselves, and how we interact with each. For me, the answers are a constant refreshment that banished drudgery, cynicism, and resignation. They embrace and respect the fullness of each student’s behavior with fierce empathy. They peel away biased perceptions and parochial expectations that limit our understanding and thereby enhance our ability to see each student as a whole human being and the whole classroom as a vast diversity. They help experience a deep appreciation, awe, and wonder about each student, and dance in each’s possibilities.
My answers enveloped me in a soft blanket of gratitude for all I see. They created an ecstatic creative game filled with fun and play. It is like one time long ago the great violinist, Isaac Stern, told me (long story) during a practice session in preparation for a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York, that he “plays” the violin rather than “works” it. That is all important because our thoughts and feelings create our world. Too often too many of us fight fiercely to protect our own perspective and fight equally hard to project and impose it on students. To paraphrase Yeats, the classroom is full of magic things, impatiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
Louis