The Breath of Life

When the rhyme and the reason of life alludes us, we project our troubles on demons and grant our successes as the products of a righteous God. But the rain falls on every man.

Every breath brings us closer to the reality of our finite existence, but we savor each heartbeat and move forward, clinging to the hopes and dreams that pass our way—short triumphs and accolades, love and happiness when it comes around.  This love that carries us forward is what we cling to; love holds us to the earth, but also sets our feet on flights of fancy--love is infinitely more than a romantic notion—it breaks the chains of loneliness around our hearts.

What separates us from the beasts? This soul we possess is more than ghost and spirit; it is the power that gives us feet to run from a troubling past into the arms of a promising future.  It is the power that makes us cry at a soft melody and reminisce at times of past triumphs never to be revisited.  This soul gives us pause at a painted landscape and helps us contemplate each new sunrise.

 

I was there when my grandfather passed. I saw his spirit leave with his breath.  The energy and warmth of life left with him as well.  To where it passed is the mystery that we seek to understand.  But that spirit lives on in the living.  It lives on while we breathe and contemplate our existence.  It lives on in the soft embrace of the ones we love.  It lives on in the school children that laugh on playgrounds and in the smiles of proud parents as they rock their babies to sleep. 

This mystery of life and spirit is a gift to mankind by a graceful God, who knows the value of life and grants it to us daily in small measures that hide in plain sight. This is the life we have been given; all it’s good and bad and pain and promises are a part of the hand we are dealt. May we play it with all sincerity and carry the torch of life and love till our spirit escapes us, bound for destinations unknown.  

Go With The Flow

“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I never cease to be amazed at the human spirit.  The ability to thrive in the face of adversity.  The ability to move on after tragedy.  What propels us on? What makes us move forward when all the signs of the times tell us that we need to stay in one place?  The world says find an area of comfort and stay there. Hunker down.  Enjoy your time.  Don’t make waves and don’t rock the boat.  If only it were that easy.

What gives you flow?  Is it finding an activity that stimulates your mind and beckons you to master it?  Is it creating a work of art, knowing no one else has ever seen it the same way?  Is it spending time with a loved one, feeling the sense that time stands still and savoring every moment with them?  Flow is an amazing thing.  It even appears at times when you have no energy or you “don’t feel like it.”  I remember times that I have not wanted to go the gym or work out and I told myself to “move it!”, only to discover it was exactly what my body needed. 

An abundant life is a series or ups and downs, of joys and sorrows. But every moment is to be experienced, both good and bad.  How can you take out the bad experiences and say you have lived a complete life? Without the bad, life would be a fairy tale and we all know those don’t exist. Life is a series of choices.  Those choices lead to situations that test us, try our patience, and show what we are made of to the world.  How we accept the challenges that come our way tells a lot about our character. 

I am in the midst of a job that I love.  Every day is a new challenge; a bridge I have never crossed. But the assurance that I am experiencing the life I was meant to live keeps me going.  Although there are many people smarter than me and more talented with much more experience, I relish the thought of being the underdog.  I get excited at the future and possibilities that lie ahead.  Sometimes I wonder if someone who is 46 years old should start a second career.  I was 10 years away from retirement as a public school teacher.  Wouldn’t it have been so much easier to coast through those years, retire at 55 and sit in my rocking chair awaiting death?  Possibly.  But that has never been the way I operated.

I relish each new challenge.  I get excited at facing things I have never experienced .  I love meeting new people, especially those who share an excitement for learning, for expanding diversity in STEM, and those who also cheer for the underdog.  As far as work goes, I have found the flow that I always desired.  I have found the career that gets me out of the bed every morning and helps me face the day, knowing I am making a difference.  I have many goals, and some days I am not sure I will reach them all. But my enthusiasm, my trust in God’s higher purpose, and my belief in the power of education to transform the world compels me to keep going.

Every day is a new day, a new challenge, and a new vision.  Every day is a chance to fulfill that journey I started over 20 years ago, when the first inclination to be a college professor entered my mind. I am at peace knowing I have reached the “beginning” of my journey. I am at the trailhead looking over the mountains to come.

I take a deep breath and move ahead, knowing each step moves me forward through this new life.  May I never lose this hunger for knowledge or this thirst for fulfillment.  May I never settle for coasting through life, always striving to meet every challenge that comes my way with perseverance and resolve.  

Hope: For the Best

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never Is, but always To be blest:

The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,

Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”

~Alexander Pope, from An Essay on Man (Epistle 1) 1733

I have always wondered what the expression “hope springs eternal” means.  Pope, in his thick 18^th Century English prose, tries to explain how the world is ordered by the providence of God.  He talks about how man cannot see the plans of God because of the limits of our vision, but he believes God is in control even when the world around us feels out of control. 

Finding this section of the poem got me thinking about this strange phenomenon of hope.  It is powerful yet elusive. I have had hope at many times in my life, but at times it has been shattered.  Lately, I have been very hopeful about the future, but always wondering about the specific details and my part in it. I want to believe it will always get better, but the fatalist inside me says “maybe it won’t”. The truth is sobering:  we don’t know if it will get better.  My out of control finances may fall deeper down the slippery slope of indebtedness.  My health, which is quite good at the moment, could change at the drop of a hat.  So telling people “It will get better” is just short of a lie, but what are the alternatives?

There is always “Life sucks and then you die.” That will really cheer them up.  How about “Keep your chin up!” Again, not exactly reassuring.  Plus, you are likely to run into something while looking at the sky. Finally, you could throw out this one “Life is short. We are not promised tomorrow.” Again, not particularly effective at generating a sense of hope. The truth is pretty plain:  It will get better or it will not get better. So before you get totally depressed, let’s change gears and look at it from a different perspective.

Hope is something that you cling to like a life raft when you are swimming in the ocean and the sharks are circling. Hope is what makes you roll out of bed in the morning when your feet hurt and the birds are singing outside, but you don’t particularly feel like singing.  Hope is what makes you get dressed for that job that you hate because you know someday you will be going back to school to pursue your dream.  Hope is fed by the warmth of loved ones and the warmth of sunshine on your face as you walk through the woods.  Hope doesn’t promise tomorrow but it makes today worth living.

I know the Bible says “Now abide these three: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.” I believe that, but I also believe that love is the glue that holds our hope together. We can have hope without love, but when love is present, it binds hope together into an unbreakable bond; for those who are loved have the confidence that love is eternal, and we know that to be true (especially for a Romantic such as myself).

Hope breeds optimism.  Hope looks forward and keeps our feet moving in the positive direction. Without hope, man would be a pitiful creature indeed.

Never lose hope, for the future, whether it is bright or not, is just around the corner and we must face it with all confidence if we are to finish victorious and without regret in this maze we call life.

Don't Know Much About History...

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana

I have to admit I have never been a student of history.  It never appealed to me as much as science and technology.  I am mostly a future-oriented person when it comes to the field of education:  How can I help students prepare for their future careers?  What skills do students need to make them productive citizens?  What are the important learning outcomes that will be beneficial to students when they leave high school and go to college?

However, in recent months I have begun doing a lot of reading about the past.  Specifically, I have been reading accounts of African Americans and how they dealt with slavery and post-Civil War society.  The main authors I have read are Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois.  One thing I am learning to appreciate about history is that people in the past times made mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes were huge.  There were life-changing attitudes that enslaved an entire race and made them blind to the possibilities of other men being equal to them.  They believed lies and stereotypes and let fear rule their communications with those that were different than themselves.  Some proposed that one race was superior to others and used “scientific” evidence to back up those beliefs. 

It is clear that many had good intentions and believe they were good people who were doing the right action at the time.  In hindsight we see their mistakes and it is easy to judge them.  Then it hit me.  Will future generations look back at us 100 years from now and say the same thing about us?  “What were they thinking?” “Can you believe they thought that to be true?” “How could any rational person propose such a solution to that problem?”  For that reason, I am learning to understand people in the past in light of the time, the culture, and the surroundings.  This by no means excuses their behavior.  How can you say a man is good when he owns slaves and uses racial slurs when speaking about them? But I am trying to understand the reasons for their actions.

I also realized my own imperfections, biases, and prejudices (yes we all have them) and I began to wonder how I would have acted in the same situation.  It is easy for us to be pious and say “I would never have done what they did.” But we have no idea how we would have reacted at the time.  The key, I am learning, is to try and understand the heart of mankind.  The heart of man is imperfect; full of frailties and hatred and misunderstandings and, most of all, fear.  Fear of the unknown.  Fear of stretching out a hand to help those who are different according to society’s standards.  I want to understand all perspectives; not to excuse the behavior but to understand how it could have happened.  

Racism is not all about black and white, it is about knowing and understanding your fellow man, as W.E.B DuBois said well in 1903 and it still rings true today, "Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor--all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked--who is good? not that men are ignorant--what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men." I am learning more about the heart of racism and discrimination to help understand the perspective of underrepresented groups, such as African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and women.  In the area of education, these groups have experienced profound changes in the past century. Learning about the way they navigated these changes, and still navigate them today, helps me to understand how we can show them a brighter future and help them catch up in the world of education.

There are also a number of people who based their theories and actions on, what we now know, to be faulty information.  One of those individuals was Lewis Terman.  The famous Stanford psychologist is responsible for the IQ Test and the majority of the standardized testing protocol used in modern educational psychology testing.  He refined the idea of a longitudinal study. But under the surface of his success was a belief in eugenics.  He felt the white race was superior in intellect and breeding to all other races.  He used scientific analysis and research to prove his point. Even today we see differences in IQ scores between the races.  But what amazes me even more is that we take for granted that the whole system of intelligence testing could be flawed because of his untrue beliefs.  As a society and as individuals, we cannot just accept the research of the past and continue to build a system of education based on the lessons of individuals that came before us.  We must not accept their beliefs as “gospel” and the status quo.  The main factor that attracted me to stereotype threat research is because it gives possible explanation to the differences in academic success between Whites and African Americans.  It may not be the whole solution, but it is a start.

I guess what I have learned from history is that we are making history right now.  We have the power to change it for the future.  We have the power to change our thinking and understand a race different than our own.  We have the power to rewrite some of the past historical failures that have haunted us.  Will it be easy?  Of course not.  But change is never easy.  As Frederick Douglass said “Without a struggle, there can be no progress.” 

We make the changes that are necessary.  We write and rewrite history every day.  Make it memorable.

Embracing the Human Experience

“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.” ~Karen Kaiser Clark

Loneliness.  Fear.  Stress.

These are words that come to mind when faced with a new situation.  Many people cower in fear and refuse to face these changes. I recently have moved from a medium-sized town to a huge city.  Adjusting to a new environment is hard to describe.  You see people you don’t know.  New grocery stores.  A new gym.  However, perspective is a worthwhile teacher and I know I have come to this new location for a higher purpose.

So what should I do? Hide in my apartment and sink into depression and despair, lamenting over my new home.  Or do I accept it?  Take it in stride? Embrace it?

Our lives are filled with both joyous and devastating events.  We may experience the birth of a child and the death of a loved one in the same week.  Both experiences take adjustments, although death will also be filled with grief and sadness.  New environments take responding to.  New experiences demand that you focus on them, fight through them, and accept them as they are.

Recently I have been trying to connect on Facebook with former friends and many of the students that I taught for the last 21 years. In the past, I noticed that I tried to send requests to those that were just like me (white, male, heterosexual, Christian).  Recently I decided the send requests out to all sorts of friends, students and acquaintances (black, female, gay and non-Christian).  Do I appreciate their perspective or necessarily agree with everything they say or believe?  Of course not.  But to embrace the human experience I want to see it from their eyes.  I want to understand how they think and feel, so I can empathize with their experiences as well.

For some reason we think that people are different in a big city, but I have experienced so many nice people already.  They say “excuse me” at the grocery store, they talk to you at the park, and they move things for you at your new job without grumbling.  They experience life like you do.  They put their clothes on the same way.  They laugh and cry and experience pain at the loss of the things they care about.  In the end, humans are much more alike than we are different.  I am a Christ-follower and I am not ashamed of that, but I want to understand the perspective of these who are not. 

The bottom line is this:  embrace life.  Embrace its joy and its pain.  Embrace the sadness and the loneliness.  Embrace the unique perspectives of those who are not the same as you.  Celebrate the accomplishments of those around you and cry with those who mourn. As much as I want to run a marathon, climb a mountain, or win a Nobel prize, very few individuals accomplish those things.  I can, however, experience life to its fullest by embracing the triumphs as well as the obstacles that come my way.

 

I have chosen this new life as a college professor, so I must experience the pain of being away from ones I love and adjusting to a new environment.  To do this, I must trust in the strength God has given me.  The only alternative is to not reach the potential that I know I have inside me or to check out of life and chose not to change and grow.  Personally, I chose to grow, struggle through the uncomfortable feeling of new things, and find that potential. 

Failure is always a possibility, but I will never know triumph unless I embrace the possibility of failure, which means accepting my own frail humanity. 

Embrace the experience of living. It is worth the effort!