The Wisdom in Wandering

This work is difficult because we want to get away from the anxiety as fast as we can and return to the illusion of control in our lives. But, if we want to gain the wholeness we seek, we must spend time wandering for it is the place of creative emergence of higher aspects of who we are. We must trust the process, our inner wisdom, and our natural propensity for growth toward our highest humanity. 
~ Marianne Williamson

Week two of school-year sabbatical is about to close. Almost every day this week I've been in awe of this process of adult project-based learning. After all, that what I'm doing. I am experiencing hourly relief when I pinch myself and remember the relative freedom I have to follow my own wanderings on my own schedule. Don't get me wrong; there's plenty of structure. I have sets of to-do lists I tick measurable items off of, stacks of books I am dying to read and some I'm in the middle of, emails galore, meetings that get me into school several times a week. But the joy of making my own schedule, of moving with my own rhythms, of following questions into several books and articles over the course of a few hours, of taking a yoga break when I've been working for several hours, of truly and calmly anticipating awaking the next day to be with this process some more, it's a gift I cannot seem to even fathom yet. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes much in "Self Reliance" about being able to follow one's own pace or follow one's
"whims," for lack of a better term and, for him, lack of the desire to explain further: "I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation." Now, don't get me wrong, as with everything in my life, I walk the line of paradox. One one hand, I am skeptical of the all-too American value of individualism, the mash up of Romanticism and Puritanism that says hard work, integrity, self-possession, and independence is all one needs to be "successful" (let's not even go into definitions of success and the capitalistic implications therein). On the other hand, I am a born and raised American woman who not only has those cultural values mixed into the fiber of my genes, but I've also achieved much in my life due to those very characteristics. (I swear, this post is going to come together!) However, this is the first experience I have as an adult being able to follow my own whims on a (mostly) daily basis. 

Those whims don't take me to procrastination of my work or squandering of time, in fact it's quite the opposite. The more I listen to them, the more connected I feel to my work. It's healing. Nourishing. Centering. I almost said "professional whims" but what is taking shape is an interconnected personal and professional self, one I've been working for years to achieve in a more sustained way (hello, Parker Palmer!). I have hope that perhaps there will come a time when my full-time job sans sabbatical feels a bit more like this, like my talents/interest/passions/skills/growing edge are meeting the needs of an organization and/or others in a way that strikes balance, maintains passion and energy, that keeps me whole. 

“Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic self-hood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks--we will also find our path of authentic service in the world.” 
― Parker J. Palmer

“If we want to grow as teachers -- we must do something alien to academic culture: we must talk to each other about our inner lives -- risky stuff in a profession that fears the personal and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, the abstract.” ― Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life  

Intentionally and actively being a part of a system is no easy task (hence my Rowland work on collaboration, reflection, and shared leadership that at its heart asks the question of how to be both sustainable and sustaining in the ways we engage in our monumental work). Keep hearing this: I love teaching. I love teaching, reading, writing, thinking, questioning, and learning from and talking with students. Love it. But it's so exhausting. Every minute of every day is planned, even if it's a plan to have some unstructured discussion or time for students to work on a project or paper. My every moment is scheduled and planned: check in with these students first, give feedback on this essay, ask this student about his sick grandmother, attend this committee meeting, grade until 11:00 pm, create an agenda for this meeting, email this parent, research a better strategy to help this student comprehend the reading. Again, I do all of this with so much love and appreciation to have "work that is real," but there isn't much time in there (maybe nor should there be, I'm serving a purpose beyond myself in those moments) to follow my own whims, to strike a balance that feeds that work long-term. (Those darned Puritan values could be contributing....) The human need is so, so great. The word "whim" has been on the lintel of my classroom door for the last five years. Mainly it's there because I teach Emerson in American Writers, so I'm playfully and seriously asking students to internalize what it would mean to follow their own rhythms, to be present to their own unfolding, to see how internal self and external work can become more aligned for the benefit of both. Now it's time to add the term to the lintel of my home, I think. 

As everyone and their cousin would like to tell me the best way to go about this work, the books I should read, the plans that are best, the things to avoid, ad infinitum, when I listen I hear this still and persistent voice that is my own. And it sounds steady, resonant, clear, and grounded in my experiences and education. It's a trustworthy voice. I SO appreciate all of the advice, all of the insights, all of the experience of others that can help my own. I actively listen to all of that, too. But never in my life has my own voice been so clear. Time and experience and others will help me to know if that voice is right or wrong. Correctness is not the point. The point is that it is long since time to listen to this voice, to trust, to refrain from "half" expressing myself. It's time to till this plot of ground. What a fertile, spacious, humbling ground it is. 

If you've made it this far, I adore you! Thanks for indulging me in this wandering post. I promise more concrete ramblings are on their way. 

More Emerson to feed your soul:

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

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Okay, so maybe this didn't come together like I promised. I'm embracing that imperfection I warned you about! This blog is about putting ideas out there, documenting my process, and engaging others, not about a proven thesis statement or a cohesive argument.

P.S. I love Emerson. No really, like an infatuation only an English teacher could sustain for decades, like I would've married the guy at his lightest ("Self-Reliance") and his darkest ("Experience").