Since I read a fair amount of material daily, I am confident
that I will bump into some interesting things.
Of course, it also means I run into boring things and sad things,
too. Clearly it is easier now than it
ever was to get news from around the world.
It would be intriguing to know for sure what I would have thought the
term global meant when I was six years old, or even in middle school?
In one way that might seem threatening. To be aware of the much larger world runs the
risk that we minimize ourselves. In
retrospect, I know that I was very provincial growing up as a little Indiana
farm boy. I could not help but be
provincial. Of course, I would not have
thought that I was! In my eyes I am sure
I was perfectly normal. I would have
assured you that I had choices: to remain on the farm or go to the city. Of course, going to the city would probably
have meant some other city in Indiana!
I grew and my world grew, too. I went to other states and, finally, to other
countries. I flew half way ‘round the
world, expanded my horizons by expanding my experiences. I remained the Indiana farm boy and, yet, I
morphed into an entirely new guy---a global citizen. I learned about life on a totally new
scale. But it never took away the need
for me to figure out and, then, live my own life. I could pretend to be someone else. But finally, our only choice is to be
“me.” Thomas Merton would have said:
“you can be your false self or your true self.”
There are sages and good models out there in the world to
help us see our options. Some sages are well
known. Mother Teresa has been one such
model for decades. Nelson Mandela is
another. Neither hails from Indiana, so
they help us all become globally aware.
But there are always the unsung folks---people we never hear about or
wind up very lucky to hear about. I met
one such person in a recent newspaper article.
The guy’s name is David Menasche. He was 34 years old in 2006 when he was
diagnosed with brain cancer and fully expected to be dead by now. He was a high school teacher in Miami. He loved teaching. He did not want to die. All this seems perfectly normal to me. David Menasche became a teacher for me when I
read some of his account. We will never
meet, but we don’t have to meet.
The story becomes particularly poignant when David observes
and, then, interprets his situation. He
said, “The cancer had
finally succeeded in taking me out of the classroom, but I wasn't ready to let
it take me out of the game. I wasn't afraid to die. I was afraid of living
without a purpose.” Two things struck me
powerfully in this quip. David says that
the cancer took him out of the classroom, but not out of the game. What a great distinction. I want to hold on to this.
The
second thing he said really struck me.
He tells us he was not afraid to die.
I suppose every living human being hopes he or she can get to this
place. It would make life so much easier
to live! It was the second piece of that
sentence that riveted me. “I was afraid
of living without a purpose.” The
classroom had been his purpose for living.
That had been taken from him and he was now afraid---not afraid of
dying, but of living without a purpose.
So
David found another purpose. He wanted
to know whether his work with students, who had long-since graduated, had made
any difference? So he began traveling
the country to meet with many of them.
This is his report. “As I had hoped, they
recalled favorite lessons and books from class, but, to my great surprise, it
was our personal time together that seemed to have meant the most to them.
Those brief, intimate interludes between lessons when we shared heartaches and
vulnerabilities and victories were the times my students remembered.” I’m not surprised. He had made a difference, but perhaps not in
the way the educational system would expect.
Intimate
interludes. I wonder how many jobs
provide these opportunities? Then I
realized that is not the right question.
The right question is whether I and others can create our own intimate
interludes in the midst of whatever jobs we are doing? If the answer is no, then perhaps we need to
look at our jobs or ourselves. Intimate
interludes seem like a fancy way of talking about being spiritual.
We
could stop here, but there is a final observation from David Menasche that I
want never to forget. He observes,
“My students had taught
me the greatest lesson of all. They taught me that what matters is not so much
about what we learn in class, but what we feel in our hearts.” So much of education concerns the
head---knowledge. There is nothing wrong
with that. Knowledge is valuable and,
often, spiritual. But that is not all.
What
we feel in our hearts is key. I am not
sure the Buddha or Jesus would have put it much differently. This brings me squarely back to “me,” to my
true self. Whatever it is, the true self
is connected to my heart. To become
spiritual is to become aware of our hearts, to know our hearts, and finally to
share our hearts in intimate interludes.
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