Now: Moving Forward and Looking Backward

This school year hasn't been the easy golden year I was told to expect. Having taught all of my courses before and being comfortable at my school in my third year there did not equate to ease. Now that I am headed in to the last few weeks of the school year, I can start to gain perspective on the year as a whole. And through that fact, I now realize what I have gained this year. While it wasn't ease by any means, it was something I needed much more.

Self-acceptance. I am human. Being human--my self--on stage in front of 100 vulnerable, critical, beautiful people each day is draining. It's many sunshiny things, and it's also rainy--makes you want to curl up in pajamas by the fire at 5:00 p.m. with everyone in the house on gag order. And that's okay.

A favorite past coworker of mine in Maine shared one of the simplest and most valuable ways of understanding the world. Faith was a senior clinician at the addiction treatment program I was a measly admissions assistant. She was in her 50s or 60s--vivacious, wise, confident, calm, forgetful, upbeat. (In a former life she was a social worker on an army base in Germany.) We were interacting with a particularly tough client who was making choices for herself and her children that were hard to fathom. Faith reframed my view: "You know what I've learned about most about people doing this work for 30 years? Everyone is doing the best that they possibly can. If they could do better, they would. We have to assume that everyone is doing what they think is best in any given moment or situation no matter the results. If anyone could--with the tools and experiences and resources with them in that moment--achieve better, could muster better, they would. You just have to assume that." I've recalled Faith's words so many times since 2005.

Just as I must accept my students and assume that they are doing the best they can--some with crippling barriers in their way, this all also applies to me. To all of us.

It's okay if every single lesson isn't completely airtight. (Then, it's okay if a student doesn't give every single assignment 110% effort and creativity.) It's okay if I get those papers back a few days later than I expected. (It's okay if a student occasionally passes in work late.) It's okay if that graduate paper isn't given another revision. (It's okay if a student doesn't transform that draft into a masterpiece.) Because I am--we are--human. And the irony is that when I stop wasting energy worrying about striving for more, I'm more able to actually achieve it.

For a hundred reasons, I grew up to be a perfectionist. For a million reasons, the concept of perfection can be a deathtrap for teachers (and students). The idea of the "tragic gap" has helped free me from the confines of perfection, of linear success, of fixed mindset. I can stand "between what is and what could be." Gracefully, in time, I will be able to exist on that line. We always want more and better for ourselves. We have glimpses of the ideal, glimmers that beg us to hope and heal and strive; we have glimpses of the depravity and darkness that breed doubt and fear and cynicism. (The horror! The horror!)

And we must co-create our experience by living and reflecting, by moving forward and looking backward simultaneously. It's a form of stillness. To get to now, that elusive present moment, standing between what is and what could be.

Cheers--to living the examined live in community.