Hanging over my computer, among other things, is something I wrote
twelve
years ago in a Random Thought I called "The Heart of Teaching." I read it
every morning.
It's one of my spiritual caffeine kicks that kick off each day:
How often and easy it is to leave the human reality of
education
unrecognized, let
the fact that people are the key to education go
unacknowledged,
and ignored the truth that
education is a
living thing which requires constant attention to detail,
upkeep, time, effort, nurturing, nourishing....I think
we should
think less and feel
more. We should hear less intellectual talk and more
compassion
talk. We have
to exercise our feelings. Feelings have meaning only to
the extent
that we act on
them. We have to teach from the heart and with the
heart, not
just the brain. Each
day we have to enter class with love and leave it with
love...I
will go out on the
limb and say that the absence of heart is the greatest
ailment of
education. I will go
even farther out on the limb and proclaim that the
heart of
education is an
education of the heart.
.
I've been looking especially intently at those words this past
week. It was
last Tuesday that this paragraph took on a human face. It was about 5:30 in the
afternoon. I was heading home thinking excitedly about how something new I had
tried in
class had been a whopping success, but I was really looking forward to being
with Susan
and our traditional early evening relaxing glass of wine. A young lady, whom I
didn't
know, was sitting on the concrete bench by the building entrance. As the doors
closed
behind me, she got up and rushed over.
"You Dr. Schmier?" she asked.
"Yeah," I answered.
"You don't know me, but that doesn't matter. I read that talk you
gave to the
Relay For Life people in the Spectator about you having had cancer and how you
dealt with
it. I've been waiting for you. I got to talk with someone. My friends tell
me that
you're someone who cares about students and who I can talk to. I know it's
late, but do
you have a few minutes for me? Please."
I looked at her tortured face and heard the urgent tone in her
voice. Her
teary eyes were pleading. She looked beaten. Susan and the wine could wait a
few
minutes.
"Sure. Let's go over there and sit down," I softly replied.
We went across the pedestrian walk and sat down on a bench. I
listened as she
told me with words that still reverberate in my soul, although don't hold me to
every
word.
"I've been feeling a lump in one of my breasts lately. Everyone
says I'm too
young for it to be what I fear it is, but I am so scared its cancer. I'm so
afraid my
breasts have betrayed me. Everyone says it's probably nothing. Nothing?
They're crazy!
Cancer runs in the women of my family. My mother had it. My two aunts had it
and so did
my grandmother. Cancer has been deadly in my family. Don't worry? Shit!! I
can't think
of nothing else. I can't sleep. I have no appetite. I'm afraid to call home.
I've got
mid-terms all this week and papers due, but I just don't give a damn about
taking exams,
and writing papers. I can't keep my mind on studying. I don't care if I pass
or failed.
I just don't care. That all seems so unimportant and useless. I told my
boyfriend and
he's no help. He doesn't know what to do or what to say. No one really does.
All he did
was to ask me if it was catching, the asshole. I haven't heard from him in
days. I'm
beautiful, but I'm afraid I'll be so ugly. How can I be sexy? Who will want
me? Who
will hold me, touch me, and love me? I'm supposed to be energetic, but I feel
so drained.
I go the Student Center every day to work and am in peak shape, but I feel so
weak and in
a dark valley. I look in the mirror and it looks shattered. I think of how it
will be to
look bald and pale and like a skeleton. I remember that horrible sight of my
mother when
I was a youngster. Everything is suddenly out of whack.
Before I could say a word, she blurted out, "And, please, don't
send me away.
Don't tell me not to worry until I go a doctor. Don't tell me to go to a
councilor or a
support group. Maybe later, but right now I just need a loving 'cancer friend'
who has an
idea of what I'm going through."
"One night," told her quietly, "about two weeks before the
operation to take
out my cancerous prostate and two weeks after my wife and I had seen a
high-powered
consultant who told us about the probably physical consequences of the cancer,
I lay in
bed awake. Like you, I couldn't think of anything else. A bunch of stuff was
racing
through my mind in spite of the fact that all the doctors told me not to worry.
I got up
out of bed, went into the bathroom and got one of my wife's mirrors. It was
about three
in the morning. I took the mirror with me into the living room to think.
Maybe 'to feel'
is a better term. I had been conjuring up all evil images of the impact of
possible
incontinence and impotence-and death, even though no one really talked about
that because
we caught the cancer in its earliest of stages. All the words of all my well
intentioned
friends and the doctors weren't much help. I sat on the sofa. It was pitch
black. I was
quiet. I held up the mirror and looked at myself with my heart's eye instead
of my mind's
eye or my body's eye. And, I saw myself not physically through my 'eye of the
beholder,"
but soulfully through my '"I" of the beholder.' And, in that dark I saw my
true beauty
and my true humanity. I saw that no matter what would happen physically, I saw
what
really mattered. No cancer could eat away my nobility, sacredness, worth,
dignity, spirit,
zest, ability, talent, creativity, imagination. No operation could take out my
enthusiasm
for life. That realization of where my true beauty is, lit up that darkened
room. I
took a deep breath. Everything was fine after that. I went back to bed,
snuggled up
against my wife, and slept like a baby. And, have been ever since. So, every
day I
smile, every day I laugh, every day I dream, every day I see beauty, every day
I see my
own beauty, every day I am enthusiastic, every day I am intensely aware of the
preciousness of this day, every day I feel--deeply feel--the joy of living.
They tell me
that they got all the cancer out. They tell me that I am cured. Maybe. But,
I don't
surrender to the fear of what might happen if there's an errant cancer cell
floating
around and growing inside me. I don't give up this day for fear of what
tomorrow will
bring." I paused and whispered, "Find yourself a mirror and see if you can
find yourself.
I can't think of anything else to say that doesn't sound trite." I paused and
then said
in almost a whisper, "I don't know if that helps."
"Yeah, it helps," she signed quietly. "I feel better just because
someone
understands and respects my fears. Thank you for being my 'cancer friend' and
telling me
how you felt and acted, and not telling me how to feel and act."
We talked a bit more and agreed to talk whenever she needed a
non-judgmental
soul. I still didn't know who she was, and still don't, but as she walked
away, I thought
to myself, "Leo Buscaglia was right. All she was fearfully, and passionately,
asking was
for a human being to take her human hand."
And, so many, far too many, academics think that we classroom
academics are
not in the people business? They assert that what happens outside the
classroom to each
student has no bearing on what happens inside the classroom and is of no
concern of
theirs? They think that what is happening inside each student doesn't shape
his or her
performance and is of no concern to theirs? How wrong they are!
I slowly got up, walked home in what seemed like slow motion for
that now
desperately needed glass of wine, the comfort of my Susan's arms, and the soft
"I love
you" that will I knew invariably would flow melodically from her heart and
lips.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History www.newforums.com/L_Schmier.htm
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\ /\ /\ /\
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