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Copyright © Louis Schmier and Atwood Publishing.
Date: Fri 9/27/2002 5:57 AM
Random Thought: Let's Be Real
I'll just say that every time I finish reading the about 170
weekly student journals, I think of one of my favorite Zen stories. And
reading a host of e-mail responses and getting involved in a few off-list
conversations with some e-colleagues, that story is even more vivid this
morning. Both student journals and faculty comments were replete with
explicit and implicit yearns for an Eden before the expulsion, with
prayers of "if only" and wishes upon a star of "I wish" for all problems
to go away.
One of my favorite Zen stories:
A priest was in charge of the garden within a famous Zen temple.
He had been given the job because he loved the flowers, shrubs, and trees.
Next to the temple there was another, smaller temple where there lived a
very old Zen master. One day, when the priest was expecting some special
guests, he took extra care in tending to the garden. He pulled the weeds,
trimmed the shrubs, combed the moss, and spent a long time meticulously
raking up and carefully arranging all the dry autumn leaves. As he worked,
the old master watched him with interest from across the wall that
separated the temples.
When he had finished, the priest stood back to admire his work
and whispered to himself, "Beautiful. Perfect."
"Isn't it beautiful," he called out to the old master.
"Yes," replied the old man, "but there is something missing. Help
me over this wall and I'll put it right for you."
After hesitating, the priest lifted the old fellow over and set
him down. Slowly, the master walked to the tree near the center of the
garden, grabbed it by the trunk, and shook it. Leaves showered down all
over the garden.
"What are you doing?" screamed the priest.
"There," said the old man, "it is now as it should be."
The moral of the story is simply that we should be real and accept
the truth that there is no ideal. There is no ideal student and no ideal
classroom situation--and no ideal professor. Now, don't get me wrong. I
am idealistic and I think ideals are important. They have a role to play.
They should motivate us to reach out and up. Yes. They should point us in
the right direction. Yes. Uplift us. Yes. Make us lighthearted. Yes.
Offer purpose. Yes. Create a sense of mission. Yes. They are a tool of
inspiration. Yes. They are a measurement by which we gauge our lives.
Yes. They are all these things. They are not realities in themselves.
And, an overdose of ideals is, if we assume the ideal student or the ideal
professor or the ideal classroom is a reality, harmful to our health. Ben
Franklin warned that when circumstances and people don't fit our ideal, if
we're not careful, the ideals become our difficulties and afflictions.
How true. When we are plagued with either or both what I'll call "the
perfect student syndrome" or "the perfect professor" syndrome, we lose our
balance, our sense of the real; and we hallucinate, painfully mumbling a
mournful dirge of "if only" and "I wish." It is when we forget what ole
Ben said that we get frustrated, because we are looking for something that
cannot be found, searching for someone who doesn't exist, striving to
create something we cannot fashion, thinking we are someone who is not,
and fashioning becoming someone we cannot be.
So, let's be real about students and ourselves. We academics
can't be the perfect human beings because we are human beings. We can't
expect students to be perfect humans because they, too, are human beings.
We can't expect any class composed of human beings to go perfectly as we
want because that class is composed of human beings. We have to get
unstuck from the ideal image of ourselves and of students. We have to
stop polishing our halos and promoting our saintliness by tarnishing the
humanity of students. We have to stop assuming what we think about
ourselves and students is the absolute truth about us and them. We have
to stop retreating from life and advance into it. We have to stop wishing
upon a star who we want ourselves and them to be, and accept who we and
they are. We have to acknowledge our own human needs, our own pains, our
own fears, our own darkness which we allow to halt, confine, constrain,
divert us. And when we don't, we and they pay a high price. We bury
ourselves into a blinding and deafing and desensitizing fictional prose,
and we cannot connect.
You know, a few weeks ago I had what my darling Susan fearfully
called a "serious cancer scare." I mean I had my annual check-up on a
Wednesday, unexpectedly got a call from my doctor on Thursday that he was
sending me to a Urologist, heard from the urologist on Friday, saw him on
Monday to be examined and have some tests done--and then waited around for
a couple of weeks waiting the results to verify the urologist's diagnosis.
I struggled to console her, and comfort her, and allay her fears, and put
my best foot forward. Hell, I struggled to do the same things with
myself. I struggled to put the prospects of having cancer out of my mind.
I suppose I could say that I succeeded. I could say that, but don't
believe that for a second. You don't think that the rapidity of those
events, the fact I didn't have to wait months to get an appointment didn't
put my hair on end? You think I didn't bring it into the classroom with
me? In a pig's eye! It was lurking all about me like an enveloping, and
sometimes opaque, cloud. Every now and then I thought I saw the speck of
a vulture circling in that cloud. My ideal of not worrying until I knew
there was something to be concerned about didn't quite perfectly work.
Sure, I tried to paper over it, pretend it wasn't so, not deal with it.
And yet, it caught up with me every moment because by the very fact I was
fighting to put it out of my mind, I was consciously putting it in the
forefront of my mind. I couldn't run away from myself. I couldn't escape
myself. It was going wherever I was because I was going wherever I was.
None of us is free of life's problems and challenges and
distractions and shatterings any more than are students. We each live in
what Carl Jung called "our shadow." We all have periods of fear, moments
of cynicism and/or skepticism, times of confusion, instances of
depression, resignation, distractions, troubled relationships, worries,
discouragements, despairs, compromises, annoyances, angers,
disappointments, abuses, senses of rejection, stresses, arrogances,
uncertainties, insecurities, and impatience. Students and us are dealing
with financial problems, death, injury, marital problems, parental
problems, time conflict, alcohol and drug problems, legal problems, single
parenthood, lousy job situations, pregnancy, divorces, painful divorces,
physical illness, troubled children, troubling children, troubling
room mates, lost love, new love, etc, etc, etc. Students carry that "stuff"
with them and it impacts on their focus, attitude, and performance. We
carry that "stuff" with us whether we want to or not, whether we
acknowledge that or not, whether we're conscious of that or not. And it
impacts on our concentration, attitude, and performance.
And yet, so many of us are in denial, fight so hard, spend so much
time, expend so much energy struggling to be that super-human paragon of
strength and virtue we are not and cannot be. It is to no avail. It
still preys on us however we pray it won't. As a recent book by Jon
Kabat-Zinn is titled, wherever you go there you are. And, we academics
waste so much time and energy fighting to deny that simple truth of our
humanity. So many of us think we can be into our intellect and subject
and our of ourselves. Celebrity, resume, title, degrees, wealth of
knowledge, position are not protective immunization shots against being an
imperfect human being. In fact, they may make the light dimmer and darken
the darkness.
If, as the Persians said, fate throws a knife at us, will we catch
it by the blade or the handle? If we utilize the ideal and the real
properly, if we reach for one and accept the other, they will embolden our
courage, strengthen our resolve, brace our determination, maintain our
perseverance, give us more patience, deepen our understanding, sharpen our
senses, alter our perceptions and preconceptions, give us faith and love,
and provide us more insight and wisdom. If we use them the wrong way,
we'll feel discouraged, frustrated, depressed, annoyed, angered; and we'll
accuse and blame.
Circumstances, us and them are always different from what they
might or should be. The question is, then, "Now what?" How are we going
to handle it?
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