Copyright © Louis Schmier and Atwood Publishing.
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 07:04:22 -0500 (EST)
Dear Dr. Schmier: I've been thinking and feeling a lot since classes ended. I've been thinking about you. I've been thinking about Niteka. And I've been thinking a lot about me. I hope you are having a happy holiday. I know you weren't all that happy when classes ended. Maybe I can help you smile. You were right. I want you to know that I am making sure that I am fighting for the first time in a long time to be happy and that I am struggling hard, real hard, not to feel sorry for myself and to like myself. I owe it to me to be happy not just to be alive each day and breathe but to live and breathe life into each day. Each day has to be not just a thanksgiving, but a thanksliving. I never knew that. You and Niteka taught me that. Weird, huh? You wrote CARPES DIEM on the board as the words of day when you told us about Niteka's murder. I've never seen tears on a professor's face when we talked and you said you didn't know why such things happen and her stupid death was a time of testing. Maybe this will help. Here is my Christmas gift to you. Those tears washed away the doubts I had about your sincerity when we talked all those times about my troubles with losing my mom and feeling abandoned. I kept saying to myself, "yeah, yeah, yeah" when you told me about feeling abandoned as a second son in your family. I have to admit now that I was curious that you never told me what to do like everyone else did. You just told me what you did to find yourself and that it was possible for me to find a way if I wanted to and had the courage to do it. It hit me a few days ago. It was true. You really did care and that maybe I was worth caring about. You really did believe about hope and love and belief and faith. And that's why you refused to abandon me even though I kept abandoning myself. You kept coming back to me time and time again even though I didn't do anything to encourage you to think I was worth not being abandoned again and I really screwed up the class. I'll let you in on a secret. I did it on purpose to get you off my back, and you gave me a change to clean up my mess. Your class is a special place to learn about history and life and ourselves altogether. It's a place where you are interested that we become better persons not just better students. I want you to know that a bunch of us did what you said you were going to do. We hung around after you cancelled class and left the room. We talked and thought about how some of us knew Niteka or wished we had gotten to know her better. She always had a smile. Then we got to talking about how each of us would spend our last day. We gave each of us an assignment. We had to make up a list what we would do if we knew that tomorrow wouldn't come for us. During the next work day in class, we enchanged our lists. Boy, did I see what some of the things you said to me meant. My life was so poor and empty. I have so used the least rather than the most of my life. There is so much living I could jam into each day. And yet so many of us have gotten ourselves into so many jams, have been so petty on the silliest things, concentrated on the least important things, and have walked around a lot as if we were dead. Reading each other's list I saw how much I could see and feel and do, and how blind and deaf and numb I had been because of the stuff you and I talked a lot about. And we talked about how and why we wait around and waste so much of each day. And you know what? None of us wrote down stuff like climbing mountains, going on a spending binge, going on some way off vacation, or going to the moon. Most of what we wrote was just simple everyday stuff about laughing and appreciating and thanking people and apologizing to people and doing for people and calling people just say we loved them and watching the birds and slowing down and feeling. It surprised the hell out of all of us. And it finally hit what you had been saying to me all semester. Life is not fair. I have to deal with it, get over it, get on with it. I can't decide whether shit happens, but I can choose whether to walk in it or not. I think I see that I have to decide what to do with my hurt and whether I let it weaken or strengthen me. And like you told me over and over and over again, to live is to both win and lose, to laugh and cry, to be happy and unhappy, to taste the sweet and the sour. I hear you now. I'm not going to let that past stuff destroy me like I was doing. I don't live a life. I have to live a series of one days that add up to a life. So, every day has to be like Christmas with its gift of a day. And I have to give it all I have and do the best I can and do better the next day and I have to help other people do the same. And if we can live, like you wrote on the board, carpes diem, we'd have so much more meaning to who we are and what we do. I just finished watching Christmas Carol. I am like Scrooge. I have been saying "bah, humbug" to life and myself for so long that I had lost my spirit, and along comes the ghost of Niteka like the fellow he worked with. I feel like I've been visited by all those Christmas spirits. It's just oozing out of me. Niteka gave a lot of us, at least me, the ultimate gift. I only hope I can unwrap and use it each day and I don't lose this feeling. No, I am not going to let this be just another stupid New Year's resolution. This is going to be me like you said one inch at a time, one step at a time, one day at a time. Now, I don't know where all this is going to take me, and I am scared. I don't know if I can do that. I won't know unless I try, huh? Like you did. And if you could do it, why couldn't I. Right? I know now why you only talked about yourself. It was an example of what I had in me if I had to guts to look. But, I've got to face whatever things may bring instead of running from then. I'm going to study like hell, like I can do and got to do now. And, I am going to live like hell. I want you to know that I've stopped with all this crap and that I'm starting to get rid of crap I took inside me that I hid behind so that I can start the long road to cleaning my body and soul up. I'm warning you. If I get to thinking I can't do it anymore and that I'm too tired to try, I'm going to come into your office for a good kick in my ass and my spirit. Well, I'm going to pop in whether I need that kick or now just to say hello. Niteka gave me the gift of life with her life. And I am sorry it cost her her life for the likes of me to find our lives, but I don't think I would have seen or believed what you were saying otherwise and I would have gone off the deep end. Hell, you know I was thinking that I was a worthless piece of shit and was thinking of flushing it down the toilet. Thankfully it was only talk because I didn't have the guts to do it. Hell, \I didn't even have the guts to live. Not now. No way. No more being the coward in class or in life and blaming others. Like you do in class when some of us really screw up and you still find a reason to care about us and offer us hope, I have to do that for myself now. Remember the picture, Private Ryan? I am going to make Niteka's death count by making it give me life. Happy holidays. And like you tell us everyday, smile!
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Make it a good day. --Louis-- Louis Schmier lschmier@valdosta.edu Department of History http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html Valdosta State University Valdosta, GA 31698 /~\ /\ /\ 912-333-5947 /^\ / \ / /~\ \ /~\__/\ / \__/ \/ / /\ /~\/ \ /\/\-/ /^\_____\____________/__/_______/^\ -_~ / "If you want to climb mountains, \ /^\ _ _ / don't practice on mole hills" - \____ |