It’s about 7:00. Slowly, the night’s blackness is starting to be pushed
away by the approaching gray of dawn. I’ll go out for my 7 mile walk in a few
minutes when the sun is fully above the horizon and I can see when I’m going.
This dawning morning, sipping another cup of freshly brewed coffee by the
computer, I had come in from standing by the koi pond. I was listening to the
music of the pond’s waterfall. I could hear the warbling of an awakening bird
above me.
I am always amazed by this time of the impending day. Miraculous
things occur everyday that most of us don’t sleep through or take for granted:
dawn, with its awakening sights and sounds. It always causes me to pause. A
parade of gray, dancing colors, sounds, bright sun rays reveals a newness in
the air: mysterious, unknown, hopeful, instructive, beautiful, joyful. You
can feel the freshness and smell the wonder. You can sense that everything has
led up to being here this day. Here is life, my life. Here is when the past,
my past, can change. Here is when the future, my future, begins. Here are new
choices to choose. Here I can exhale regret and dismay, and inhale new life
into myself. All this revolves around, involves, unconditional faith and hope
and love that is tough, demanding, raw, gritty, active, involved, engaged,
adventurous and very real; they are respecting, embracing, expansive,
inclusive, connecting, generous, tender, kindly, caring, sympathetic,
energetic, edifying. They are the day's starter kit. In them, you find the
love of living, loving and living big. They are what make common things unique
and sacred for me. For me, they instill a fearless and supple hunger and
thirst for what is and what may be. They defeat defeat. They reduce reducing.
They activate action. They inspire inspiration. They energize energy. They
are a celestial rhythm that makes possible the only thing we have: today, now,
with its challenges, opportunities, and possibilities. So, if I have a
mission, it is to see my own daily dawn, and assist others in doing likewise.
And, therein lies a seminal questions: do we see the dawn in the likes of
John? Do we break the confines of our accustomed perceptions and expectations
of the likes of him? Do we hear the secrets of the birds’ song in the likes of
him? Do we see the bright rays of faith and hope and love pushing back the
darkness of stereotype, generality, and label to reveal the beauty in each
student?
That outlook was what I drew on when I responded to a question from a
professor, “What did you say to John and do with him to get him to change?”
This was my answer. “Your question got me to thinking about Carl
Rogers’ On Becoming A Person. In 1991, that 1961 groundbreaking book became a
keystone in my life and my humanistic view of teaching, and my realization that
we academics are in the people business, in the serving business, in the
business of serving people. In it he wrote that given the right conditions
people can identify for themselves what hurts them and find their own way to
personal growth. So, my quick answer to the question is ’Nothing and
everything.’ I did nothing: no ‘curing,’ no ‘saving,’ no’fixing,’ no advice,
no answers, not even motivating. I never do any of that. All I did with him
as I have done with others was, with a strong emotional sense of what I call
‘serving otherness.’ to be deeply present: accepting, seeing, noticing,
appreciating, attentive of, attentive to, aware of, alert to, sensitive of,
listening to, believing, respecting, and, above all, connecting with the
superglue of unconditional and nonjudgmental faith, hope, and love. It’s
piecing through, or tearing down, impersonal and dehumanizing herdlike
stereotypes, generalities, and labels. It’s living out the lyrics Mr. Rogers’
‘It’s You I Like.' It’s a kind of companionship presence that pushes aside
“aloneness,” that invites someone with her or his potential to show up: no
knee jerk assumptions, no intrusive questions, no ‘how are you,’ no forced
conversation, no doing all the talking, no expectations of visible and
immediate results. It’s the only way John and others will come to terms with
themselves, with who they are and who they truly can be. It’s a quiet
hands-off and a loud hearts-on involved approach that is not about me being
seen. It’s about them being seen, respected, and appreciated. It’s about
serving the needs of others in a way they can serve themselves with a patient
‘whenever you’re ready,’ and ‘whenever you can.’ When John first entered class
he felt alone. All I did was to offer him the bones of acceptance, of
belonging, and of fitting in, and let him do the rest if he was so inclined to
seize the opportunity.”
“After being slapped on the back with congratulations by his
classmates, after getting a nod and a wink and a thumbs up from me, his daily
journal entries became something of a spiritual vomit, expunging all the toxins
that were poisoning his soul. Each day, knowing I was reading his every word,
he was acquiring a confidence he never had to search out the once unimaginable
“I can do this” potential within himself. Each day, he found that he had been
driven by outside forces rather than those from within him. Each day, he
slowly discovered that he should not have been so certain of who he is, who he
could be, and what he could do or not do. Each day, he slowly understood that
whatever limits he had accepted, he had placed on himself.
‘You know, Chicago’s John Cacioppo, a psychologist at Chicago, in his
Lonliness, and Brene Brown at Houston in her Braving the Wilderness, say that
it is all about making connection, that Rousseau was right when he said, in
modern parlance, that our DNA wires us to be wanted and to belong, that
connection’s core is believing in ourselves, that believing in ourselves means
we must be authentic, and that being authentic means we can both belong and
stand up alone at the same time. Once John asked me how he could get out of
his resigned malaise, how he could molt into a new and comfortable skin.
Remember, I have always said that I never give ‘you have to do' advice. I
don’t because I don’t know anyone’s the entire story with its own set of unique
experiences. At best, I can read a sentence, hear paragraph, see a page, or,
if I am lucky, take in a chapter. But, never the entire story. So, I answered
him, as I have done with others, with a ‘this is what I did’ by telling him
about my own experiences and the insight I drew from them: my family background
as a second son that left me with an inner impovishment caused by a sense of
not belonging in my family; about my consequent less than stellar student
experiences; about being an outdider and of my need to belong which created an
inauthenticity by being and doing what was expected of me by others; and about
how I always felt I was on the outside looking in. Then, came my epiphany in
1991, followed by my successful dealing with cancer in 2005, and then followed
by my survival of a massive cerebral hemorrhage in 2007, each of which took me
to a crossroads. I would tell them how I daringly used them to pull out the
sapping tapeworm of weak self-esteem, weak self-confidence, and a host of other
depreciating ‘selfs;' how I drew on them to consciously understand my own
story; how I made them into constant nudges that altered and keep altering the
theme of my life in a positive direction; how I began more and more to speak
truth to my own bullshit and that around me with a muscular empathy and
civility; how each one closed the gap between who I was and who I wanted to
become; and how I reconfigured myself by changing the source of my joy and
happiness and meaning. I told him that all these experiences had the impact of
raising my ’thought energy,’ an energy that was determined only by whatever I
thought, that determined as much or as little drive I had, that determine what
path I would take, and that drew on faith, hope, and love of myself as powerful
strategies to defeat the crippling enemy of disbelief and fear. ’They are,’ I
once said to him, ‘my own form of constantly “thinking naked.”’ That’s all I
said, and left him to raise the level and intensity of his own ‘thought
energy,’ find his own strength and courage to understand his own story in order
to nudge himself in the direction of his own answers and find the way to his
own growth.”
“Sure, I asked a leading question now and then. Sure, I made a
supporting and encouraging comment here and there. Sure, I shared by own ‘been
there.’ Sure, I used the power of turning a life around, in the spirit of Leo
Buscaglia, of a soft touch on his shoulder, an admiring smile directed at him,
and a host of other small caring gestures and words. But, I never, offer,
offered, a prescribed “You must do this” remedy as an answer. I was all about
inspiration, not motivation. That was for him to do: to be inspired with a ‘I
want to see in myself what he sees’ to motivate himself. That’s the only true
way a person can find lasting and continuing growth and change. You know,
that’s the true meaning of that adage that you can lead a horse to water, but
you can’t make him drink. All we can do is put salt in the horse's oats to
make him thirsty. The salt I added is respectfully listening, sincerely
believing, having deep faith and hope, and always, unfaltering loving.”
“I think the most meaningful words John ever spoke to me were at the
end of our conversation on that sidewalk, ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘for just being
there.’ And, I knew at that moment that he was continuing on his own journey
of self-discovery. Can anyone question why I flew with the wings of Mercury on
the rest of my walk and why after all these past two months have yet to alight?”
Make it a good day
-Louis-
Louis Schmier
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org
203 E. Brookwood Pl
Valdosta, Ga 31602
(C) 229-630-0821 /\ /\ /\ /\ /\
/^\\/ \/ \ /\/\__
/ \ / \
/ \/ \_ \/ / \/
/\/ / \ /\ \
//\/\/ /\ \__/__/_/\_\/
\_/__\ \
/\"If you want to climb
mountains,\ /\
_ / \ don't practice on mole
hills" - / \_
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