or perhaps just the ramblings of a senior citizen who finally has a few moment to step back and consider a number of things.
This will be personal, even as at times it will be political, because to me all politics are personal, and no that idea is not unique to nor original from me.
But it will also be personal because at a point more than 1/3 of the way through my 70th year, as I consider the relevant extents of the life I have already experienced versus what may be left, if I am going to pay attention it is because it matters a great deal to me, even if only because I wonder about what kind of world will be left when I am no longer here, what I can do that can make a difference, how I should spend what time and energy may be left to me.
I am writing this because of a traffic jam.
A traffic jam, on a Sunday evening, westbound on I-66 having crossed into Virginia from DC on my way home from giving some transportational assistance to a close friend of my wife.
The right lane (of two) was inexplicably closed, with an unmarked police car with its lights flashing angled across it. As I finally approached, and swung into the left lane, I noted the state policeman (White) behind the wheel as he finally pulled onto the shoulder. Ahead of him, already on the shoulder was another unmarked state police vehicle with its lights flashing, with the officer walking back to his vehicle from the one he had pulled over, a beat-up older car being driven by a black man at least 50 years of age.
And I could not help myself. I could not help but wonder if this vehicle were stopped because the driver was black. I noted the car two ahead of me that passed the vehicle blocking the right lane - his bumper was partially ripped off and sticking out away from his vehicle, but it was a newer, more expensive car being driven by a White woman in her 30s-40s. Yes, my reaction was because of Sandra Bland, because of a policeman who had made a u-turn to get behind her vehicle.
But this was liberal Arlington VA, in a state with a liberal governor. Still, I started to think what matters.
Those who follow me and/or read what I post know that I have not as yet been able to obtain a teaching position for the forthcoming school year. I had begun to doubt myself as a teacher.
I am home for the weekend, having spent a week teaching Macro Economics and the Global Economy to rising 8th and 9th graders at Dickinson College on behalf of Johns Hopkins' Center for Talented Youth. On Thursday I was observed twice, first by my dean, and then by the site director. Let it suffice to say that both thought very highly of what they saw. What is key is that I have been able to develop a real rapport with my 16 gifted young people, which enables us to push and learn a lot more. As a result I have no doubt that I am still an effective teacher, even if I am unable to persuade a school or school system of that fact.
I have not written much here recently. Not only I have I been almost entirely missing from the recent diaries, I also have commented on the postings of others even less frequently than has been my wont. I have found time to read some - this site is key to keeping me informed about what of importance is happening in the world - but between looking for a job (which can be very time consuming), refinancing our mortgage and changing insurance on house and car (now completed), and then preparing for and teaching this course, the time available for blogging-related activities has largely disappeared.
I have continued to ponder. I keep a small pocket spiral notebook with me and regularly jot down observations and cogitations. Despite being busy I remain concerned about the world about me, concerned enough that a few weeks ago I cleared several hours so that I could hear Sen. Sanders speak at an event in Arlington. I continue to read news articles and opinion pieces - in the NY Times, The Washington Post, elsewhere. I continue to connect what I read with what I observe. Thus this morning I read this piece by Joe Stiglitz on Greece and realized what he has to say about austerity and democracy is not only applicable in what he has seen in places like Indonesia and elsewhere, but is equally applicable here - after all, we have Kansas under Brownback as a model for the destructiveness of austerity, and yet some of our elites care no less than Greek and European elites do about what is happening now because (a) they have an ideology that blinds them and (b) at least in the short term they benefit personally and politically.
Politics should give voice to the voiceless. Democracy should work to include all, to get them to participate. A liberal democracy - the technical political science term for what our system of government is supposed to be - should seek to bind people together, not to divide them, pitting one group against another, in order to amass political power for a small group.
In economics there is a key principal, that trade has the capability of making everyone better off. That is, on a macroeconomic level, levels of consumption/production expand beyond the production possibility frontier when people specialize. Yes, internationally, "everyone" means the society as a whole, even as some producers/workers may lose their livelihoods. In theory some of the benefits to the society as a whole can be used to help such firms/workers so that they are not disadvantaged. But not if those who obtain profits/benefits are too selfish, as has been the case in this country, where the benefits of productivity has accrued to a very narrow portion of our society, who then use their financial power to further control the political and thus the economic processes to further distort our economics and our politics.
I wonder why I continue to want to teach. Yes, it is something at which I am very good. It does not pay close to what I might be able to make applying my skill set in other domains. I know this - I do not value myself, or others, primarily by the financial returns that result. There are other things of greater value to me. For example, we have an elderly cat who can no longer get around as he used to. I can think of few things more important than picking him up, holding him for a bit, then putting him up or down where he needed to go to eat, pee/defecate, go up/down stairs for a change of scenery, or curl up on a heating pad on the hospital bed on which my wife still has to sleep, because it smells of her.
I am proud of the teaching awards I have won. But these pale next to a statistic of which I am aware - in 19 years of teaching I have had more than three dozen of my students follow me into the classroom. I have at least once had a former student as a fellow faculty member in the school in which I taught for 13 years.
That statistic is key to my understanding of myself when I reflect. Of what value are my knowledge or my skills if I do not use them to benefit others than myself?
I have no trouble with people making large amounts of money because of their gifts - I am neither a leveller nor a complete socialist.
And yet there are some things for which the primary motivation cannot be profit if society as a whole is going to thrive. Those things essential to existence - access to basic shelter, basic nutrition, basic health care, the possibilities of improvement (education and employment).
I look at the Sanders phenomenon and I remember other campaigns in which people invested energy, emotion, hope, only to be disappointed in many ways. I remember when I first listened to Bill Clinton telling my wife that he was the most gifted politician of my lifetime, even though at that point I was a Tsongas supporter. I still feel that Clinton remains that most gifted politician, even as I was often disappointed at how he used - or did not use - those gifts, of the opportunities lost as a result.
And yet I refuse to fully abandon politics and become cynical. I am unlikely to fully invest myself in a candidate or a campaign again - I last did so for Jim Webb for the Senate in 2006. I would have done so for Tom Vilsack had he stayed in the race as President. I am not so inclined now, at any level of politics. I am honored that people ask for my support, but I have no money, and as I age I find that what I can offer is the chance to inspire young people to try to take ownership of the politics that will affect them, and occasionally to use whatever gift of words I may have to provoke or challenge others.
I am shaped by many things. I am a child of privilege. No, my parents were not wealthy, either by inheritance or by earnings. Both had Ivy League degrees, my mother both as an undergrad and as a lawyer. Each had one parent born in Europe. My father's family was lower middle class in income, but all 6 kids graduated from college, five from Cornell, with two earning doctorates. My mother's family was more comfortable, with a summer/weekend home in Long Beach as well as an apartment in the San Remo on Central Park West, but they were not wealthy.
My sister and I had the benefits of going to concerts and Broadway shows, of having music and art lessons, of spending summers at what was then National Music Camp in Interlochen Michigan, of knowing we could go to whatever college would accept us without having to worry about how to pay for it, so she went to Sarah Lawrence for the first of her three degrees (later degrees from Bank Street College of Education and from a law school) and me to Haverford (from which I finally got my BA when I was almost 27, followed by two masters degrees in religion and in education, as well as most of a doctorate in education).
I have had the benefits of being acquainted at various points in my personal meanderings with people who have accomplished a great deal in a variety of fields - business, entertainment, law, medicine, education, athletics, religion. I have had teachers and mentors who put up with my lack of focus and still cared for me as a person.
Of greater experience, I lived through a period of time, however brief a blip in our history it now seems, in which American society as a whole recognized our need to change. I came to adulthood during the Great Society, having already prior to that begun to participate in Civil Rights actions, including at age 17 coming to DC on August 28, 1963.
I saw a society make major changes.
I saw women begin to be more fully included - in professions, in business, in government.
I saw the same for people of color.
I lived in NYC at the time of Stonewall.
Perhaps one reason I want to remain a teacher to is remind our young people that we saw gains, for all our failures as a generation (I was born in 1946, the beginning of the Boomers) but those gains are never guaranteed.
My aspirations for the society and the world in which I live remain vast, wide-ranging. Yet I have learned through almost 7 decades of life that while I can always hope and work for more, it is rarely right from my perspective to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, even as I remember always that the lesser of two evils is still evil.
So what does this mish-mash of words represent? Perhaps I cannot articulate a coherent philosophy of life, something that defines in such a way that it can guide all my actions. I am not by nature an ideologue, because ideology can too often blind one to the humanity of the person before one.
My sig here is part of my approach, even as often I fail to live up to it. Is what i say and do, and what I do not say nor do, demonstrate kindness? To whom, to what end?
I have a mind capable of a kind of analysis that can lead to political manipulation for advantage. Knowing that I can do that does not mean I should, or rather, the analysis can help me understand possible outcomes precisely so that I can oppose them b ecause the results are NOT kind.
I know that I cannot heal all that is wrong that I encounter, because after all i cannot by myself heal myself. What has been hardest for me in my 7 decades is to accept the love and support and help offered by other - ask Leaves on the Current, who has remained with me for more than 40 years despite this very serious failing on my part, despite an often not far from the surface self-loathing, self-doubt, even self-hatred.
But even as I know that I cannot heal all that is wrong, I an make a difference. I can be the little boy throwing starfish back into the sea, knowing he cannot save them all but can save those he does throw back. I can be the man tended the carob tree whose fruit hye will not live to see, knowing that he participates in the possibility of that fruit for his descendents.
I do not have biological children. I have created no great works of art or literature. mMy insights are far from influential or significant. What then is my legacy when I am no longer here?
Perhaps the best that I can hope for is that from time to time what I said or did played some small part in helping someone else grow more than perhaps they might otherwise have done. Perhaps it is a student who realizes that s/he is capable of something s/he never considered. Perhaps it is one more person voting for a candidate who otherwise might have lost, who then becomes responsible for one more law that makes an improvement in the lives of others.
It is a Sunday morning. I sit listening to music on my Ipad as I reflect and write these meandering thoughts. I am in a Starbucks. Occasionally I notice the people around me - I just saw a yoga teacher I slightly known (not her student) whom I have not seen here for several months. I encounter a fellow teacher and we share about our lives. I exchange nods with people who like me are frequenters of this particular stie. I qwatch parents and children, couples, older unattached people who come here to avoid being isolated, the ever-changing staff of the store.
This is a slice of the life in which I find myself. It is one view of the society in which I live. It provides me with windows to lives beyond my own. It is part of how I remain connected to something beyond myself.
I suppose that is why I write. I know it is why I teach. It is why I pay attention to and care about politics and economics.
It is why when I encounter a traffic jam and I see its cause I wonder why that car was stopped and not others.
I recognize that I have privilege, despite the fact that I am not wealthy nor famous nor influential in big ways.
What I learned from many sources starting with my family is that with my privilege, with the benefits that have accrued to me because of privilege and opportunity and inheritance, comes obligation to something beyond my own self-aggrandizement or enrichment.
That is, enrichment in the normal sense. Because this I have learned: as a teacher I am enriched immeasurably by what connection I have with my students. As a writer I gain from the responses of my readers, even if negative, or even if I never directly hear or read those responses.
For better or worse, I am a part of something much larger than myself.
Thank heavens.
I would not have it any other way.
Peace.