In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most of it sweeps
As all they might have done had they been loved.
Philip Larkin
“Faith Healing” P.101
As much as we may think we should have our own internal sense of our own worth no matter what anyone says about us, every human being is, to some extent, impacted by what is reflected through others’ eyes. If we accept that we are affected by what others think, then we can look for opportunities to get useful feedback, challenges and support.
I always think of a near to retirement teacher who was categorized as ‘resistant” to our integrated arts curricula. She went along with activities in our workshops but made it clear that she didn’t expect to take any of the ideas back to her students who were too ‘low and difficult” for any of these arts infused inquiry projects.
Halfway into the first year of our work with her school district, we had an opportunity to visit her school. As we entered her classroom, we braced ourselves for what we’d see. We were totally surprised and in some ways, humbled by false assumptions we’d made with only one narrow slice of evidence.
Her students talked to each other in small groups, wrote using graphic organizers, smiled and asked deep questions of each other. We were confused why she spoke so very disparagingly of her classroom. On our way out we shared a few anecdotes from her students’ conversations and our brief observations that they brought so much attention to their work, how lively and engaging they were.
She smiled bigger than I would have imagined possible for her and she said, “I always think my kids are so bad. But you’re right. They do all those good things you said.”
I thought about all the times I had tried to get her interested at our workshops with no success and then this one small comment about her actual students touched her. I wondered if anyone who described her as resistant had ever seen her classroom.
She followed us out to the parking lot still saying good things about her students. As we got in the car, she said, “Thanks for coming into my classroom. I feel better. There is hope.”
We can get lost in all we are not accomplishing. If you have someone to point out where you are, you have a place to start, a toehold to keep from falling into the abyss. When you have that person behind you, you have more strength to do your best.
“Notice
how you grow in the presence of people who love you
how you shrink in the presence of people who think you’re a jerk
When you are in the presence of someone taking a stand, you are inspired.
It’s where you stand, not where you don’t stand that counts.”
Lynn Twist—author of The Soul of Money and fundraiser for Hunger Project and Putumayo Project.