As a 69+ year old White male, non-smoker for 30+ years, slightly overweight and a bit out of shape, married, etc., I have an average expected life expectancy of about 25 years. Which makes it highly unlike I will pay off all the current debts we have before either I or my wife (whose encounter with multiple myeloma has probably reduced her life expectancy) pass from this world. That's a somewhat sobering thought, although so long as we both remain employed full-time we should be able to make a dent in our indebtedness, which accelerated in large part due to her illness, where between the two of us we lost over 70K in income. We are very grateful for the health insurance which covered the vast majority of the so far several hundred thousand dollars of medical bills.
Our experience is part of why I still think that we as a nation and a society have much work remaining to do on health care policy. That one major party and most of the contenders for its presidential nomination are committed to reversing what limited progress we have made is very discouraging, as is the continued unnecessarily high cost of prescription medications in this nation.
Combined with this is a strong belief that our taxation and bankruptcy laws are totally skewed to the advantage of those who do not need such assistance and to the detriment of those facing ever increasing financial stress. Add to this the ongoing war against labor rights, the dismantling of what public pensions remain, the ever increasing burden of getting a higher education at a time when compensation for that education is at best stalled if not regressing and we have a situation where our future as a society is in grave jeopardy. That is, the notion of the American Dream where each generation can do better than that of its parents seems already lost, and the increase in both the percentage of Americans living in poverty and the gaps between those at the narrow top and the rest of us are accelerating almost as quickly as the ice is disappearing from the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
So what do I do with another 2.5 decades of estimated life? How do I spent the ever diminishing time available to me? How do I apply what skills I may have that have not deteriorated with age (as have whatever athletic abilities I formerly possessed) and the lesser stores of energy?
For now my immediate task is my role as a teacher. I remain for now the only White teacher in a school where the vast majority of students are Black (not for the first time in my career). I have to earn the respect and trust of those students. I have to both challenge and support them. That will take much time and energy, and will stretch me.
Let me start my weekly reflection there.
Our teachers have been working for more than 2.5 weeks. This last week we had most of our students as we devoted time to community building, expectations, establishing routines. We were limited in what we could do because we were not in our own building, still being repaired from damaged caused by burst water pipes. Our temporary location made it difficult or in some cases impossible for some of our students to get to us. We hope on Tuesday that we will see all of our students. Some are new to us, some are in their third year in our middle school. The past two years - last especially - were difficult times in our school community. We have to rebuild trust.
And we have to have patience. We have some students who will be very trying because of what they bring to school with them. Others, being of the ages they are, will of course want to test the limits, just as we adults often did when we were their age.
We have six homerooms in 7th grade, but we only had 3 rooms for breakout sessions this week, so we doubled up. We would have the whole team together in the morning for about an hour and would close the day together.
We would begin with a poem or with a song. Ironically, it often fell to me to pick the poem or the song. We ranged from Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni to James Brown and Nina Simone. One teacher shared his favorite poem, Invictus, which I was then able to use in breakout sessions to talk about Mandela, and from him Desmond Tutu and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and non-violence looking back to Thoreau and Gandhi and King.
The counselor took some time to teach the students some very basic stretches. I took some time to teach them focusing on breathing, and the basics of Mindfulness.
These are as important as the academic skills on which we will be working. It is part of how I know I am for now in the correct setting, even as it will stretch me.
We also had our students do projects and presentations on Black Lives Matter. It was interesting to see how many could name many victims from Trayvon Martin through Sandra Bland. Some skits were very much on point, for example the one tracing Trayvon from buying his skittles through his fatal encounter thru Zimmerman's acquittal. Remember - these are 7th graders, mainly 11-12 years old.
I still read a lot, follow politics and policy. I have passed on most political events and contributions, even as every seat in Virginia's General Assembly is up for election with control of the State Senate very much in the balance. I have foregone events with candidates with whom I am friendly, for example Donna Edwards for the Senate nomination in Maryland.
I said these would be (not so?) random thoughts.
I am faced with choices about time and energy and money.
I have a concern for what is happening to the society in which I live.
I am never completely removed from politics.
My wife and I are coming up on 41 years together, 30 years of marriage.
We know the time left together is getting shorter.
I realize this makes us very much like other people, who balance civic commitments with personal commitments and responsibilities. There are probably few of us who can achieve even most of what we might want, and fewer still who have enough external political efficacy to believe that we can affect change for the good around us.
What I can do is help make life and learning and growing up a little less stressful and a little more - how can I phrase it, perhaps - full of opportunity and even positive excitement.
What I can do is to try to help others make sense of things around them, by challenging, by asking questions, by sharing observations - that is in part what I do here when I post or comment.
Last night much of the faculty and staff of our small (currently less than 300 students) went with their families to the Washington Nationals game. We had to pass on that, as my wife had had the 2nd of her cataract surgeries the day before. The previous Friday the entire staff went to a bowling alley (although I did not get on a lane, as I have not since 1971). We realize that what we will accomplish with our students will be the result of our joint efforts.
As I reflect on that, I see it as applicable for what we can accomplish for our society, including in our politics.
How can we come together, respecting our differences, being able to disagree without ourselves becoming disagreeable, not allowing the perfect to become the enemy of the good?
I do not have the answer for that, or for many other important questions.
I know that the attempts I do make will not always be successful.
What I do and how I act as a teacher to my 7th graders is connected with what I do and how I act as a citizen, a member of my community, a husband, a friend . . . .
Life is a challenge with many dimensions.
It is a journey.
In perhaps 2.5 decades the living part of that journey may well come to an end. Perhaps sooner, perhaps a little later.
A long time ago, when I was on pilgrimage on Mount Athos in Greece, I realize that how I traveled was equally important as the destination towards which I journeyed.
That has not changed.
Peace.