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Copyright © Louis Schmier and Atwood Publishing.
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 06:37:20 -0400 (EDT)
Random Thought: Imprisonment, Freedom, Teaching
My fingers are stiff; my knuckles are swollen; the tips of my
fingers are bloody and calloused; my shoulders ache; my wrists hurt as I
vainly struggle to answer 586 warm messages--and a very few chilly ones.
That's what I found resting in my mailbox when I returned home last
Sunday. I guess talking about dreaming and teaching struck a sweet chord,
as it should, with a lot of you good people out there.
More than a few comments, especially one from a student in
Montana and another from an adviser in North Carolina, stirred my soul.
I'd like to share what I replied to one:
Until a time not too long ago I was for a very long time in my own
hidden prison of self-doubt, weak self-confidence, and consuming sense of
failure. I am sure, having spoken with students from that other life, I
had transferred in some inimitable way those attitudes however I
desperately tried to hide it away from both me and everyone else as if I
was a magician wrapping myself in a cloak of invisibility. As I have
gotten to know me, to engage in a near decade long conversation with
myself I often wondered what really has been changing about me these past
nine years. I think I know now. It was not merely a change of make-up;
it was a make-over. It was not me that was changing. It was my
perceptions about myself that was changing. That change allowed me to
emerge ever so slowly from the depth of the victimizer to the heights of
the overcomer. That change allowed me to seek out, tap, bring to the
surface, and use that which was always there but to which I was blinded
and deafened. As I ventured inward and reflected, as I got acquainted
with myself, I saw how so much had been hollow, shallow, illusory. The
truth was that until a fateful day in October of 1991, I victimized
myself. I really felt chained and imprisoned, impotent. Though I often
roared like a lion for all to hear, many was the time I felt so sheepish
where I and no one could see. I slowly and painfully discovered I was an
inmate in a deep, dark, confining, and isolated prison cell: myself.
Despite my words to the contrary, I kept myself locked in by having only
one way of looking at myself.
Since that "hollywood moment, " as my son, Michael would call it,
I have been painfully and delightfully discovering a way for changing my
underlying belief in myself so that I would become an overcomer. Problem
is that I also have discovered that I really can't advise others who ask a
bunch of "hows" because what happened, happened to me. And, I have not
yet found, the self-help cottage industry not withstanding, the sure-fire
how-to-do formula, guaranteed fix-it technique, instant question and
answer list, mysterious incantation, or magic elixir or dust. Reading and
hearing the words is one thing; living day after day after day is quite
another.
No, something far more disarmingly simple yet profound proved to
be a vast untapped resource and strength: telling the truth, however
uncomfortable and painful. And, believe me when I say it was
uncomfortable and painful. I have discovered slowly that in order to
achieve I have to become someone I've never been before; I have to develop
skills I never had before; I have to acquire an outlook I had not had
before. In order to achieve something on the outside, I had to become
someone else on the inside. To achieve all that, I came to realization
that I "just" would have to struggle to be honest with myself. And the
truth was that I thought I was free, and I had to admit I wasn't; I
thought I had been satisfied, and I had to admit I wasn't; I proclaimed
myself a success as did others, and I had to admit to a deep sense of
failure. Then and still, I have a relentless hunger and thirst,
relentless desire and need to root out the ways I had limited myself and
to discard those beliefs and techniques I had used to deceive myself from
seeing what truly is. It meant trying key after key, going through door
after door, crossing boundary after boundary, breaking wall after wall,
building bridge after bridge. It meant letting go of the self-satisfying,
pat answers and grabbing hold to the questions. It meant re-opening the
book of my life and start reading the never-ending story, of searching
constantly for understanding, accepting that there is no ultimate answer.
It meant entering a state of openness, accepting the truth that any
"answer" is at best an approximation that is forever subject to
modification, adaptation, reapplication, improvement--never final. It
meant letting a curious--some say courageous, "let's see" surface. It
meant an unending broadening of my self-awareness and awareness of others,
of trying to see more of the human playing field. It meant continually
deeping my understanding of myself, people and forces.
It meant "the spirit of love." That is at the heart of the true
freedom. I have come to realize that love slowly opens the cell door,
shoos away that pimply troll called fear. Love for yourself and others
has everything to do with attitudes and intentions--and actions: of a
commitment to serve something larger than myself; of visualizing a world
that is not deeply self-centered and self-interested; of the willingness
to be open and vulnerable; of a willingness to suspend certainty; of a
willingness to exchange in the spirit of the question mark rather than of
the exclamation point; of a willingness to share in order to influence and
be influenced; of the commitment to my own completion and becoming all
that I can be--whatever that is and wherever and whenever it occurs, again
and again and again and.......
And so I become selfish. Sound strange? Well, selfish is a much
maligned word. It's gotten such a bad rap as a cardinal sin. And why?
If I were to carve some teaching commandments in stone, one would say
"Thou Shalt love each of thy students as thyself." That means that I must
first make peace with myself, love myself before I can make peace with and
love students. That is not being egotistical or narcisstic. It means if
you have self-love, self-esteem, self-respect, self-regard,
self-acceptance, you're more likely to esteem and respect and regard and
accept, more likely to be likeable, less likely to get depressed, more
likely to love life, certainly more likely to love people around you. I
admit that I need self-love. So, I go in and find it.
I think the highest form of selfishness is to give of ourselves to
others so that we may broaden our understanding and confidence, so that we
may reach inner security, serenity, and fulfillment. The richest reward in
teaching comes from helping others with no thought of reward. This is
constructive selfishness. We cannot get unless we give. If you are not
willing to serve students, you will not be a class act in class. If you
walk into the classroom as if you're entitled, if you shy away from
sharing yourself with students who need you, you'll get frustrated. If
you believe and give, the teaching coffers will never be empty.
As I slowly and humbly came to that realization--not by
intellectualizing, philosophizing, or theorizing, but through personal
experience--a deep chord resonated within me that I still have trouble
describing, even to myself. There was something new inside me and
something new out there. It drew me into a whole new series of
commitments and connectedness, educational insights and personal changes;
it led me to see an invisible wholeness in myself, in others, and in
things that is so often hidden by divisions and separations which we have
invented and by which we have become trapped. I began experiencing life
in a way I then had no way to describe. I began experiencing a broader
vision, wider goals, a higher energy, a true aliveness within me, an
aliveness in everything I did and do.
I am forever learning the difference between the positive and
forward looking "freedom to be and do" and the backward looking "freedom
from." The former is the freedom to create what I want I honestly desire.
It's the freedom of personal mastery. Freedom. It's the heart of living.
It's life's exclamation points that replace the question marks etched by
fear. In my life, in my teaching, in my gardening, in everything it is
perhaps among my highest values. It's the core of my dignity. I am
always working on the struggle for freedom. The freedom to be free to be
truly myself--free of the imposing and imprisoning restrictions of my own
self-prejudices, free of the traps of my confining preconceptions of
others, free of the chains of the limiting preconceptions others have
about me.
Memories and experiences are important, but not as important as
how you see the future. Regardless of the past memories or experiences,
today is a new day. Someone once said that the past is not equal to the
present. How true. As I often say, the present is the only present we
have, and we're obligated to unwrap it and relish in its gift. Tomorrow
is not yet. We have the power to determine our attitude tomorrow and not
let someone or something in the past do it for us. It is for us to choose
whether to hear the dark, imprisoning voices of the past or to follow the
freeing voices of light into tomorrow. How well I know that.
With that inner sense of freedom, I arduously discovered that each
of us can in some manner, shape, and form create something new, something
that has value and meaning, something that is important, something that
leaves tracks in the sand, something that touches someone's soul,
something that alters the future, something that says I was here. Every
time I feel that freedom at work, it's like holding each of my son's just
just after they were born!!
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