I did not grow up in a financially wealthy family, but we were solidly middle class, and when my mother returned to her law career when I was around 8 we had plenty of money for things to enrich our lives. My sister spent 7 and I spent 8 delightful summers at National Music Camp in Interlochen. We both had music lessons, her in violin and music theory, me piano and cello, and with outstanding (and expensive teachers). We saw Broadway plays, both dramas and musicals. We had painting lessons. We went out to dinner. We did not have to worry about paying for college.
I am also fortunate in having had a superb education. It began with the terrific public schools of Mamaroneck School System in Westchester County, NY. MY sister went to Sarah Lawrence, then later Bank Street College of Education, finally getting a law degree at Western New England. My college attendances are too numerous to list all, but I have degrees from Haverford, St. Charles Seminary and Johns Hopkins and reached ABD (with almost all of it paid for by a university scholarship) at Catholic U.
We may not always have been quite so fortunate in our personal lives, but sister has two wonderful children (and now two granddaughters) from her now ended marriage, and after a series of missteps I am now approaching the 26th anniversary of my marriage to Leaves on the Current, with whom I have been for 37 of my 65+ years on this earth.
This is not to brag. Rather it is to establish the background for my Sunday morning reflection, which is this - I have an obligation that I have still not fulfilled. What I have given you is the background. Below I will explain in more detail should you continue to read.
The riches I have experienced go far beyond the bare details I have recounted above the squiggle. I learned music and art and theater. We went to museums - my mother's parents lived only a couple of blocks from the Museum of Natural History on Central Park West. Our house was full of books, and more were ever arriving, first through others, especially my grandfather, then later through my own voracious desire to read and read and read. Our comfortable house on Huguenot Drive in Larchmont was full of books and records, as is the much more modest house in which Leaves and I have now resided for over a quarter of a century.
But there were other riches as well. Those riches were people. I could I suppose list the famous people whose lives have crossed mine, but few of them are as important except as a marker of the circles in which i was able to travel. That started politically fairly early, as both my parents were politically active.
No, instead it is the people who cared, sometimes far more than the official duties might have required.
I think of Joe McLain, principal of Mamaroneck HS, himself having been an orphan who ran away, became a journeyman printer, then got an education. He served as president of the local, state, and national asssociations of secondary school principals and on the White House Council on Education. Yet when I was a very troubled sophomore he would take time to talk with me, sometimes for an hour at a time, in his office. This was not for disciplinary reasons, although it could have been - I was forging notes and he knew it. But he also knew my troubled home situation and my confusion. He is one reason I was able to get through high school.
Another reason was Thomas Rock, my AP US History teacher, who was the first teacher to demand of me that I live up to the academic talents with which I had been blessed.
Equally as powerful in his impact upon me was Joseph "Jimmy" Bloch, my piano teacher senior year of high school, who was at Julliard where he taught materials of music known as the man with the golden ears. He never criticized, but when I did not live up to my responsibilities, he expressed instead his disappointment in a way that did nto shame me, but rather motivated me to not want to disappoint me, and when near the end of our year together I played the entire 1st Partita of Bach for him, he gave me one of the greatest compliments I have ever received: he sat in silence for more than a minute, then said to me "Within the limits of your talent, you play Bach as well as anyone I have ever heard."
I could list many others - teachers in post secondary institutions, people encountered in the work world, those whom I have encountered in my now 16+ years of public school teaching. Let me only recount the following -
I have a thick looseleaf binder that used to be a well-organized professional portfolio of my life as a teacher. Since returning to the school where I now teach in the Fall of 2002, I have not formally maintained it, but have stuffed between its pages documents, notes, and pictures that are a record of my ongoing teaching career. Recently I had occasion to look therein for certain things I needed for my application to the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I found myself stopping, reading, and remembering. There were notes from my first principal, letters and emails and notes from parents and especially from students. As my wife points out, when I have doubts about my teaching, going back and reading those notes, especially from teachers, reminds me of my purpose, of the good I can do and sometimes even have.
Which brings me to my sense of obligation.
I have been blessed. I have been fortunate. I have a responsibility to pass that on.
It is insufficient that I teach, unless i teach with passion and commitment to my students and their best interests.
I have been able over the years to have my voice heard, to get people, sometimes in important positions, to listen to what I have to offer - as a teacher, to be sure, but also as an active citizen. I have a responsibility to point them towards voices other than mine, and to help others have their voices heard.
I have learned, with much support and help from others, not to be discouraged, not to give up on myself when I struggled. Do not I therefore need to offer that support and help to others, to encourage them when they are discouraged, to tell them they matter, that what they have to offer in what they do, say or write also matters? I have to model that for them, so they can begin to have confidence in themselves.
Most of all is this - I have spent much of my life trying to figure out who and what I was, what if anything I was "supposed" to do. It took a long time, and a lot of encouragement from others, to believe that I had something to contribute. I know some who know me only through my writing do not realize or have a hard time grasping that I am in many ways painfully shy. I know that I do not easily fit in most situations, even those I know well. I often have doubts about my own thinking, about the value I bring to others.
Recently, someone I greatly respect, who is nationally known as a writer and thinker, spent more than an hour on the phone with me, helping me in my explorations of how I should go forward from where I find myself. He raised the question of my doing a book. He is not the first, but he is himself a successful author. He shared his own struggles with his writing. He reflected back to me some of what i had written. He told me that whatever i did he hoped I would not give up my writing, because he valued my voice. He then described me as a force of nature, which took me back a bit.
As I have thought about our conversation over the past 40 hours (it took place late afternoon Friday), I remembered something else he had said in conjunction with calling me a force of nature: he reminded me that there are many ways of teaching, and that perhaps I was reaching a point where my teaching might need to be focused on adults rather than on the adolescents with whom I spend 6 class periods each school day. What he made clear is even as he acknowledges my monastic streak (which he pointed out could be useful should I be willing to undertake a book), I am and will remain a teacher at heart.
Merely because we can do something does not mean that we should. Like many, there other things I could do well, perhaps even better than some do them professionally, but there may be things that if I do not do will not get done. That is not an assertion of my excellence, merely an acknowledgement that I bring a more than unusual combination of experiences and abilities to certain situations, and perhaps that provides me with some guidance as i struggle to make sense of where I find myself and how I go forward.
I have recounted this in order to address the larger point of my sense of obligation. I have been able to reach some of the realizations that are now part of my reflective process because of the help of others. It is not that this man, or others, are telling me what to do. Rather, they provide a framework in which I can explore, in which they reflect back my thoughts to me, helping me clarify my own thinking. They give me a different point of view through which I can analyze the materials and ideas with which I struggle.
I understand the nature of this process. It is in part why I have turned to some of the people with whom I have discussed the issues about my future.
I have thereby incurred several obligations. First of course is to take seriously that with which they have gifted me, a more complete understanding not only of myself but of the process of how one counsels and guides and assists others. Flowing from that is my obligation to offer the same to others.
I have mentioned before that when i first started writing here at Daily Kos, more than 7 years ago, I often struggled with what I wanted to say. One day out of the blue I received an unsolicited email from someone who was himself a superb writer, who had worked professionally as an editor, who somehow was able to sense through what i wrote the struggles I was having with writing, with finding my voice. Tim - Meteor Blades - simply encouraged me to keep at it, informing me that I had voice that mattered and were i to keep at it I would find it.
I suppose you can blame Tim for the fact i am still here. I suspect that I am not the only one to whom he has over the years offered encouragement. I have at least played that gift forward, often taking the time to encourage others, sometimes suggesting they turn a comment into a diary of their own, or suggesting to people with whom I talk or correspond offline that they should consider writing and posting their own ideas.
You will note that the title of this piece is in the present tense - "am fortunate" and not "have been fortunate." I write this sitting in my local Starbucks because were I trying to write this at home I would have one or more cats crawling over me, perhaps curling up on my lap or even my keyboard. That makes it somewhat more difficult to write, even as I count the blessing of have those creatures wanting to spend that time with me.
I am fortunate because I have insurance coverage that has enabled me to address various medical conditions, including my recent hernia surgery, without it destroy my financial position.
I am fortunate because I have a choice of what kind of work I do next year, or if perhaps I decide to further my formal studies (although I do not control whether or not I will be offered admission).
I am fortunate because I have enough to eat, a comfortable if somewhat messy home, more than adequate clothing.
I am very fortunate in having some control over not only large amounts of personal time, but over the content and methods of what and how I teach.
I am blessed beyond belief in my now 37+ year relationship with Leaves on the Current, who has been willing to accept some limitations in her own dreams in order to empower me to pursue some of my own interests.
Because I am fortunate, I believe I also have obligations.
How I fulfill those obligations is flexible and fluid. I am not required to "do" any specific kind of work. I am obligated to serve others, to help them as I have been helped, to offer them self-empowerment as I have experienced the same from others.
Perhaps it is because I am not rooted in one religious tradition, or one occupation, and that I have over time developed some ability to communicate, that I know part of how I fulfill that obligation to serve others is mine to decide. What I am not free to decide is to become selfish, to think only of myself and my own comfort, to think that because I am in the later years of my life I have less obligation towards others.
I have a moral responsibility that extends beyond myself and those closest to me. i cannot pretend otherwise. Because I have no biological children does not mean I do not have to care what happens to the biological children of others to whom I am not related by blood. After all, I do share much DNA even with those whose physical appearance is very different that what I see when I shave each morning. And I live in the same world, where what I do and what I consume inevitably impacts upon the lives of others I might never encounter personally.
Because I know how to reflect, I cannot operate without reflection.
Because I have received love and caring from others, I will have misused that gift if i do not love and care for others.
I do not claim to fully understand this. I still see only through a glass darkly. I know only in part. Yet that clouded vision, that partial understanding, is sufficient reason for me to understand that I must, perhaps with some fear and trembling, go forward on behalf of others.
Or rather, on behalf of us all, because what i do seemingly for others I am really doing also for myself. It is not that I act from a sense of guilt, but rather for the experience of connectedness. It is one way in which I can experience joy, through which I will not feel so isolated.
I know that I may leave the classroom which has been my home for many years. It may be time for me to do a different kind of teaching, as well as a different kind of learning, since I learn far more from the 170+ adolescent students than any of them will learn from me: after all, i have 170+ teachers on every day, and I am not their only teacher. I should not be, for they should also be learning from one another, and they will, if we as teachers provide them the space and the support and the guidance to do so.
My cup of coffee is still more than half full. So is the life I experience, even at what i think are my worst moments.
I have work to do today. I have several book reviews I need to write. I have household tasks to do and household bills to pay.
My planning for the school week is done. I have commitments for every evening from Monday through Friday, as well as a commitment next Saturday morning. Thus today I must ensure that I take time to just be, to give the cats that lap on which to curl up.
I am fortunate. Because I am fortunate, I want to share. I have little material wealth to share. What i have is what my life has given me.
A piece like this, which may not speak to many, is a part of that sharing.
Thanks for reading.