Responsibility? Yes, I'll Have Some

Today, I'm thinking about responsibility.  I have become aware of several incidents recently in which the people involved have done everything in their power to push the blame onto someone else.  Not some of it, all of it.

This strikes me as wrong.

Bad things happen to people which are beyond their power.  I do believe this.  However, if a person is involved in a situation, there were choices made which allowed the situation to happen.  Those choices may have been made without enough knowledge to foresee the consequences, but the choices were made.

I'm not talking about accepting fault.  For example, if you are driving, legally and safely, and someone else hits you through their own carelessness, you do not have to accept fault.  But you did make the choice to be driving, and therefore you knew you were taking a possible risk of being hit.  This is responsibility.  And you will have to deal with the consequences.

This is a light version of responsibility.  This is a situation in which you took a calculated risk and things did not go in your favor.

There are other, far riskier choices people make.  Sometimes we make risky choices for what we believe are good reasons.  If I were to see a man hitting a woman, or someone weaker than himself, and I chose to involve myself, there is risk involved, and I will willingly accept the consequences of this choice.  I am responsible for that decision, and I accept what may happen to me.

I have made many such decisions, and the consequences have not always turned out in my favor.  I choose to help people, or do what I believe is right, even against conventional expectation.  This has cost me jobs sometimes, and other important things in my life.

Sometimes, I see later that those choices were not best for me, and with more information and understanding, maybe not even best for other people involved.

I make mistakes.  And I accept responsibility.  If I were not to own my choices, I could not learn from them when the consequences negatively affect me.  When faced with a similar situation, I may adjust my response based on previous experience.

In order to continue learning, to become a better person, I must understand:  The responsibility in any given situation in which I find myself is, to a greater or lesser extent, mine.

Six Blocks

On Friday, my wife and I went to St. Louis for a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert.  The concert started at 8:00.  We planned for her to pick me up at my workplace in Strafford at  4:00 and we would be on our way.  Unfortunately, as usual, things did not go exactly as planned.  She didn't pick me up until closer to 5:00.

The trip up was hurried, but uneventful.  Yes, we sped.  She drove the first leg, but we did the Jedi mind trick that seems to work on cops, at least until it doesn't.  We made sure to not exceed 7 mph over the speed limit:  "These are not the speeders you are looking for."  The fact that we were in a Traverse, essentially a mini-van that pretends it isn't, made us a little less likely to be pulled over.

We arrived at the motel, the Millenium, at about 8:00.  We elected to just park and walk to the Scottrade Center, which was where the concert was taking place.  We asked the check-in clerk at the Millenium how to get to Scotttrade.  We were given three options:  the shuttle, the Metro, or a taxi.

Barb and I looked at each other.  We asked about walking, but she looked at us quizzically and said, "But it's six blocks.  Maybe seven?"  This seemed to put it beyond walking distance in her mind.  We left, thinking maybe we would take one of her options, but back out in the open air, walking still seemed the best option to us.  Except we hadn't asked directions for walking.

So we parked the car in the parking garage, and exited the parking garage.  A panhandler asked me for a dollar so he could go buy beer.  I appreciated the honesty, I guess, because I gave him a dollar.  I also asked him which direction to the Scottrade Center.  He appeared to be homeless, surely he would know how to walk around downtown and where things were.

He pointed us in a direction, but he warned us it was six blocks.  I couldn't help thinking to myself, does no one walk in St. Louis?  Of course, we were worried about missing the beginning of the concert, but it had become something of a point to prove that six blocks was not an insurmountable distance on foot.

We started walking.  Downtown St. Louis is a nice place.  There are gardens, and parks, and fountains, and best of all, there are maps every so often.  We located one of these, and the homeless guy had not pointed us in exactly the wrong direction, but he was close.

It was, as always, hot and muggy.  I confess, I may have perspired a bit in the walk, but it was not unenjoyable, and it certainly wasn't the Herculean task portrayed by the motel clerk and the panhandler.  We made it, and the opening band hadn't even wrapped up yet when we got there.  We weren't that impressed by them, anyway, but we only heard two songs.  Then there was that strange, equipment shifting intermission between musical acts, and RHCP blew the lid off the place.

After the concert, we walked back to the motel.  Another six blocks making it a total of twelve blocks walked that evening.  It may have even been more, because we probably wandered an extra block or two on the way there until we got our bearings.

And this leads me to my point, I guess, despite my wandering a bit.  We become accustomed to a certain way of doing things, or we impose limits on what we will do based on societal norms.  We allow ourselves to be limited.  Barb and I were ignorant enough to believe we could walk that six blocks, and we did.  It was not really that much of a task, and yet to natives of the area it was something that just wasn't done.

We can laugh at them for their self-imposed limitations, be we need to look at our own lives as well.  What limitations do we impose on ourselves based strictly on what the people around us do?  Of course, we should keep in mind morality and not harming others when we try to push the boundaries of those things that just aren't done, but there are experiences out there waiting for us if we just take a moment to ask ourselves:  why don't we walk that six blocks?

The Value of a "Worthless" Degree

Tomorrow I graduate with a Master of Arts in English.  I have mixed feelings about it.  I am glad to have it finished, but I am pessimistic about the value it holds for me professionally.

I have a Master of Arts in Teaching already, and now a Master of Arts in English.  And no job. 

Other than teaching, I'm not sure that anyone would look at a resume and see the value of a Master's degree in English for other jobs.  It does show intelligence and commitment.  I did the work required to achieve the degree.  Of course, it took me eighteen years...

Am I more intelligent for getting the degree?  No.  In my case, definitely not.  I completed most of the program except my thesis a long time ago.  Whatever knowledge I gained from the program I have carried around for almost two decades without a sheepskin.  I finally sat down about a year ago and decided to write my thesis and be done with it.

So what is the value of this degree?  Maybe someone will see it and be impressed.  But that's not a high level of value for me.  I already have one Master's degree.

For me, the value of the degree is completely personal.  I proved to myself that I could do it.  I can look at that diploma, and I can see that I completed that thesis.  I completed a major writing project and did it well enough that I was asked several times if I was going to shop it around to be published.  Instead of just knowing that I can probably do it, I have proof that I did it.  And that means a lot to me.

For me, the value of the degree is the confidence it provides.  I have this.  I did this.  I can do more.  Watch me.

Lateral Drift

I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance recently.  In it, the author used a term which I had never heard, and a concept I had never considered.  The term was "lateral drift."

Lateral drift occurs when an individual is faced with a problem and there is no apparent solution.  Despite repeated tries to overcome the obstacle, no forward progress is made.  At this time, efforts to move forward stop, and the individual enters a state of lateral drift.

The author made lateral drift a positive state of being.  It is not precisely giving up, but a state of relaxation which allows the individual the presence of mind to consider different options, although not necessarily consciously.

I suppose we all enter a minor state of lateral drift once in a while.  When we try to remember the name of our cousin's girlfriend in eighth grade and can't come up with it when we see her at the mall and she remembers our name and we strain so hard to remember hers while she is talking to us but it just won't come...and then remember it three hours later when it doesn't really matter any more.  We have relaxed, and then the answer, or the solution, will come.

I would like to think I'm in a state of lateral drift right now, professionally speaking.  I have a problem.  I really, really want to teach.  I'm constantly thinking about it, pushing for some way to get a position.  I'm afraid my letters of interest to hiring principals and my follow up phone calls give off the slightly distasteful emanation of desparation.  The fact that last year and this year I have applied to fifteen schools and haven't gotten a single interview only fuels that fire.

Relaxing a little certainly couldn't hurt.  In some ways, I should be enjoying myself now.  I work when I want to at a job that has gotten more interesting and rewarding for me.  I substitute once or twice a week and interact with some pretty interesting students.  And now I've been hired to help a friend renovate an investment property he bought when I'm not working elsewhere.  There's no real money in any of the jobs, but I enjoy the problem-solving aspect of working at the trucking company, the social contribution and interactions of substituting, and the satisfaction of hard physical labor.

I like physical labor.  It frees the mind.  My mind is in its most creative state while I'm using my muscles.

So, in my current situation, I think I'll relax.  I'll laterally drift.  I know I want to solve the problem of finding a permanent teaching position, but I need to find the joy in where I am now.

In Survival Mode

I had forgotten.

I was talking with students in a class the other day.  Younger students.  I noticed early in my first year as a teacher how resistant students at a certain age can be to new ideas.  It was interesting watching them outgrow it as they grew older, but in those first years of adolescence, new ideas are even more uncomfortable than they are for older people, I think.

I haven't read much on it anywhere, but I formed some theories, and further observation hasn't shown me the flaw in my theories.

In a young adolscent's world, so many changes are taking place.  They are changing.  The way they are treated and regarded by adults is changing.  I came to believe that it was very, very important to them to find ideas and ways of looking at the world that seemed indisputable, inarguable.  Any new idea or different way of looking at things threatened this comforting constancy they had found, and was to be rejected, and even ridiculed.  This is a defense mechanism.  With time, with maturity, with confidence, most will outgrow this to a greater or lesser extent.

My observations showed me that adolescents who came from homes where they felt secure, who had some degree of confidence that change was not always going to  come as the result of difficulties (marital, economic, health, all the problems that threaten families), were likely to be more accepting of new ideas and different perspectives than the ones they currently held.

Then there were the kids in survival mode.  Students who came from homes that may have been supportive, but were also full of change.  Divorce.  Custody battles.  Foster children.  Kids with parents who were there one day and gone the next.  These students not only rejected new ideas, they rejected any possible form of change as much as possible.  Change is uncomfortable to all of us, but it is necessary.  Without change, there is no growth.

So how to teach to students who refuse to grow, to change?  It's not easy.  And sometimes, sometimes, it may not even be possible.  That is hard for anyone who really desires to teach to admit, but it is a truth every teacher faces at one point or another.  For those students, the teacher has to take whatever small inroads into educational growth can be produced.

But the important thing is to be there.  If nothing else, be as constant and as consistent as possible.  Like the student, and let that student see your approval every chance you get.

Prepare the Ground Before Sowing the Seed

The teacher of the year in the Springfield, MO school district (largest school district in the state) said that she believed that education is built on good relationships with the students.  Interestingly enough, I talked to a principal today who said that what he looks for in a teacher is someone who builds good relationships with students.  I agree wholeheartedly with both sentiments.

As a teacher, I strive to build relationships with my students.  These relationships need not be friendly, or close, but they should be based, as the best relationships are, on trust.  I want my students to trust that I am giving my best effort, and that they are safe, and that I do have their best interests at heart.  On my part, I would like for my students to do their best, and be courteous, and respectful of my wish to help them and their classmates achieve.  I understand that they may come from a place where trust does not come easily.  My role in the relationship is to overcome this reluctance.  This is what is difficult, and also rewarding, in being a teacher.

Strangely enough, I can't help but believe that this belief is part and parcel of the reason the administration at my last teaching position released me.  They probably would not view it that way, but since my intents and goals were not a part of any dialogue I was involved in, I really am unsure how they would have viewed it.

The long and the short of it was, I had a student who could be difficult.  He was likeable in many ways, and intelligent, but events in his life had given him some trust issues which I had to overcome as a teacher.  This student was very interested in the military.  He asked me one day if I had any tattoos from my time in the service.  I said yes, and he asked to see it.  This was in class.  My tattoo is on my chest, visible when I wear a tank top (if I were to wear tank tops, which I don't).  I had shown my tattoo in previous classes, and didn't think anything of it.  Apparently, however, one of the students in class reported that I had shown my chest in class to a member of the elementary faculty, who told the superintendent.  The next day, I received an e-mail from my principal, asking if I had "bared my chest" in class.  I told him it only required me to pull down my collar slightly, and yes, I had shown my tattoo.  Nothing more was said, but several months later, my contract was not renewed.  The principal felt it was the tattoo incident which had lead to this state of affairs.  So be it, I thought.

Fast forward several more months, almost a year.  I encountered the student to whom I had shown the tattoo at a gas station.  He told me I had been his favorite teacher, and that he had decided after being in my class that he wanted to be an English teacher.  I am unsure he will follow through on this career path, but his willingness to even consider it shows me a high level of engagement in what I was trying to teach, which was my goal in the first place.

I do believe that good education is founded on relationships.  Before true education can occur, a positive, trusting relationship must be in place.  A good analogy (and I love analogies) would be that before a plant can grow, before a seed is planted, the ground must first be prepared in order to ensure the fullest bloom and the finest fruits.  Without the relationship, the students will do only the bare minimum necessary.  Mediocrity will be the result, and while I have not mastered the ability to foster a good relationship with each and every student, at least I am trying.

The Nature of Human Pleasure

I started thinking the other day about human pleasure.  I'm not talking strictly physical, although that is a part of of it.  I'm talking about the general idea of actions and a state of being that allows us to describe ourselves with the broad adjective "happy."

In my mind, I divided pleasuree into three areas.  These divisions are physical pleasure, social pleasure, and then existential pleasure.

Physical pleasure is obvious.  Sex, eating, scratching an itch, a cool drink on a warm day...all these and much, much more are the lowest form of pleasure in my mind.  This sense of pleasure is brought about primarily by satisfying our own needs, our physical needs, our basic survival needs.  This level of pleasure is usually enhanced by our bodies telling us "Good job, you did something necessary for survival."  Our bodies do this in the form of endorphins.  Unfortunately, our bodies are stupid.  When we eat, endorphins are released.  Every time.  So if nothing else is making us happy, we eat and then overeat.  The results of giving in completely to physical pleasures are never good.  When we try to find our happiness chemically, be it through a state of euphoria from chemicals naturally occurring in our bodies or if we introduce artificial chemicals for the same result, we are damaging ourselves.

The next level of pleasure is social pleasure.  This can be directed inward or outward.  We receive pleasure from recognition of our peers, and also for contributing to our peers' well-being.  We are happy when we are well thought of, or when we are thinking of others and doing for others.  In this context, we often are happy when we are doing "right."  Doing right generally means acting in a way that strongly promotes proper social interaction.  I'm not sure if there is a chemical correspondence in this area, but since people are essentially  hardwired to be gregarious and seek out the company of others, it is essentially the same.  I think this kind of happiness is often felt by the religious; those who are happiest in religious settings.  Of course, too much of this pleasure can also be harmful.  We can strive too hard for peer recogition.  We can also give too much of ourselves for others.  As a society, we point to those who give selflessly as being individuals to emulate, but there may also be a proper balance.

The next level of pleasure is the most difficult to achieve.  This is existential, or pure mental pleasure.  We perform acts or are aware in ways that do not directly benefit us physically or socially, but seem to strike a chord within that produces a quiet pleasure.  Outside artists are good examples of this state.  They often create works of art with no intentions of selling or achieving societal recognition, but take pleasure in the creation.  We can also achieve this state by simply taking pleasure in observing the world around us.  I sometimes can reach this state when I'm thinking.  When I find a way of perceiving the world that seems to fit, I am happy.  This kind of happiness will not have a person shouting from the rooftops or dancing in the street, but this type of pleasure also seems to me to be least likely to do any damage or have any negative effects.  I would also imagine that this type of pleasure is to be found spiritually by the truly devout.  This type of pleasure could be described as being at peace with one's self, at one with nature, feeling in harmony with the universe, or feeling God's love.

I don't believe we should deny ourselves all physical pleasure, but recognize it for what it is: a means to an end, but not the end itself.  Physical pleasure is our body rewarding us for staying alive.  The staying alive is the important part.

Social pleasure is every bit as important as physical pleasure to our well-being.  Do for others, and be happy when your actions and abilities are recognized.

Take existential pleasure when and where you can find it.  It is too rare, too precious.  Reward yourself by recognizing when  your are smiling for no particular reason.