I just read Parker Palmer quoting a line from the poem by Maya Spector titled “JAILBREAK.” It struck a cord, and I, thinking of this series on “soft teaching” and “soft living,” presumptuously wrote him the following : “You quote the line: ‘Why make a cell your home when the door is unlocked and the garden is waiting for you?’ I couldn’t agree more. Easily asked, however, not so easily answered and done. I don’t think people realize what you ask is not for the impatient seeking immediate gratification. It’s not something that happens overnight. There are no magic hats or wands. There are no short-cut corner cutters. There are no sure-fire tricks. There are no guarantees. There’s just all that putting-your-nose-to-the-grindstone, globs of elbow grease, and a bunch of burning candles. But, it does show why self-imposed or culture-imposed limits are such a mistake and waste. How well I know. Aside for becoming a template of how to live my life, as an academic, it was a guide for a particular journey of discovery, of becoming a student of learning, during the entire second half of my professional career. It had been an unending learning curve, spanning over two decades, of tireless inquiry, constant reflection, endless leaps of faith, daily exercises to develop inner strength, incessant application, persistent risk-taking, and having an unquivering voice to speak out from my depths since I had surrendered to the power of that moment of my epiphany in the autumn of 1991. It was akin to becoming an academic athlete who had to enter that classroom with a mental and emotional preparation and strength of believing in myself, feeling special inside, and accepting that it was okay—if not essential and crucial—to do things differently as I cut a new path to inspire students—to be up on my game–day after day after day, to endure the pressure of “being there, live,” to show a positive example of what is possible. That moment of my epiphany had the sense of urgency of a spiritual drama. It was, as you said, like a breakout from a bleak and wintery prison of my life into a warm and blossoming spring. It was indeed like thinking my inner doors were locked tight only to find that it would take only a push, albeit a heavy push, to fling them open. That push, and the more to follow on several doors, initiated a transforming process of self-examination and self-knowledge that offered the professional consequence of academic justice. That transformation led to an academic justice of inclusion and nurturing that denied selection or exclusion; it ultimately recalibrated my heart and brain that students weren’t in the rigid category of “others,” categorically different from me; it changed cold separation to compassionate and empathetic connection; it welcomed each student, unconditionally; it respected each student, unconditionally; it cared for each student, unconditionally; it emphasized that the moral and intellectual journeys were inseparably intertwined, that for a student to truly succeed and achieve the proverbial “life-long learning,” there had to be a fervent effort towards character education. It made me see my mission in the classroom had to be organized around the first line of what was ultimately to be my TEACHER’S OATH: “I will give a damn about each person 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!” It made me a friend of both uncertainty and the unknown. It made me comfortable with the discomfort of risk, and there’s no mistaking that I could deal with mistake. Its gravitational pull brought distant horizons near by way of adventure, reconnoiter, invitation, opportunity, possibility, and acceptance. It had been a constant classroom construction project of breaking barriers of aloneness and loneliness and strangerness, of building bridges to span chasms, inviting each student to use those bridges and become part of forging a caring classroom community. It had taken me to a deeper and richer place that does not usually meet the approval of academia’s demands. It gave me a sense of knowing what I was for, and what I was in the classroom for. It gave me a vision that endowed a meaning and purpose that refused to allow any setback to send me into frustration, anger, cynicism, and selfishness. I had become what the poet, David Whyte, called a morphing ‘moveable frontier,’ moving from learned helplessness and fearfulness to learned helpfulness and fearlessness. Every day, engaged in deep reflection, I moved the line and thereby deepened and broadened my identity. Every day, I had awakened wanting to do better, and every evening, as I did my gratitude exercise, I knew I could do still better and thought of how to do be better the next day.”
Enough for now. More later on the several lessons I learned during this transforming process that I had to take to heart.
Louis