Remember, we belong to each other......

I am NOT an avid reader. Those closest to me know I cringe at the very thought of reading. It is not something I’m proud of, because there is so much to be gained from it – a whole world I am closed off to, but I’ve always been an active person, and to me, reading is so sedentary. It requires you being in one place for an extended period of time – focusing. And unless you are discussing it with someone – you have to be by yourself – isolated from the world around you – supplanted somewhere in a secret world of words. Maybe I’m just contriving excuses, but I’m trying for the sake of my students to find a love for it. I have to.
So on this particular Sunday morning, I was moved to pick up a book I ha actually read before in High School I woke up around quarter to 9 and spontaneously decided to pass up running and breakfast to read….2 ½ hours later, a tear soaked pillow and a drained heart, I finished it. If you have never read Tuesday’s With Morrie, I strongly suggest it. If you have, read it again. Although I’ve read it before (originally recommended by Mrs. P – thank you!!!!!) there was something about it this time around that penetrated so much more deeply perhaps because of what I am on the verge of beginning….

It is about a teacher – a teacher that I can only hope to become…the textbooks are irrelevant – but the lessons, the tests are among those that the memory finds a way to permanently ingrain. The book raised many questions and challenges that I had considered, but hadn’t offered adequate deliberation. You can call it a problem – maybe a contradiction – an attempt to reconcile this dichotomy of teaching that exists within my conception of my role. I know the value of an education – expanding your min. These students have been given the blessing of receiving a prestigious education and the talent, ability an potential to maximize all it has to offer…I have been blessed with the opportunity to share in it. But I’m torn by this inherent inclination to want to teach them not so much about literature, but about the world. To warn them about its evils. To push them to discover its meaning. To teach them to think counter-culturally. To uncover a passion – obscured only by fear. To teach them of love, emotion, human touch, confidence, empowerment…

I’ve come to believe that my greatest problem is ignorance in the sense that I only learn and internalize what I can feel. Not what I can see or hear – but something that I can tangibly feel from the inside. I’m not sure where that falls on the visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles chart…but words, books, tests, entire courses, movies – you name it….unless it resonate – unless it evokes something within – an emotion preferably – it typically just passes through one ear… and out the other – am I crazy??? I know it sounds ridiculous, but I feel as though I have this (soon to be classified in the DSM) emotive disorder to blame for my ignorance (though sometimes blissful!!) but if you follow my train of thought…. (and I don’t blame you if you don’t..)

I feel that just as it is the only way I know how to learn, it is also the only way I know how to teach. Perhaps it is presumptuous – but I assume that I am teaching a room full of students who think and react just as I do – and need to learn in the same way. I need to teacah in such a way that the fundamentals can and will in some way strike a chord. But how do I find that balance between masquerading as a literature instructor and teaching them the very little that I do know – what my experiences have provedn to be true…while at the same time teaching them the plots, themes, characters, ironies and symbolism that this Jesuit education promises them…al of whose true meanings I have only begun to graze the surface – as in very littls as seeped in. Perhaps balance is the wrong question to ask – maybe I should ask how to merge this disconnect???

“A teacher affect eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” ~Henry Adams

Aside from forcing me to face the daunting, yet inevitable task of standing before four classes of students on the first day, Morrie’s words on love and life soaked through me and provoked emotions so beautifully debilitating…leaving me with no other faculty but to feel (hence, I absorbed every word!!).

In the words of the one and only (and wise) Wilcard, “leaving really helps you to identify what your home is. How do you know what home is if you’ve never really left??” (Thanks love!!) and it’s soo true – in just a few weeks I’ve gained such a better perspective of what home is and has been for 22 years of my life. I’ve gained such a better appreciation for just HOW much I love people and just how much I am loved. Sometimes I just want to BURST at the amount of love I can still feel from so far away – an in a way…absence truly does make the heart grow fonder. Being so far away, I am forced to express myself more honestly….letters have been such an outlet for sharing, for allowing people (for one of the first times in my life) to hear my inner thoughts & feelings. Communication is no longer fluff- small talk. Such infrequent contact requires raw candor – no facades. I trust that some of my most cherished relationships will perhaps grow stronger thanks to the blessed gift of the pen (and blog!)

And a final – loosely associated thought –

“The greatest commandment is this..You shall love the Lord your Go with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength…the second – you shall love your neighbor as yourself…” Matthew 22:37-40
In the words taken from Fr. Bill’s homily this week, “we foolishly think that we know how to love because we crave it so much – it is the one thing in this world that we desire more than anything…we want to be loved – thus, the Lord gave us the 2nd commandment to teach us how to o the first…In doing the second, it is the Lord’s hope that we might fulfill the first.”

“Be compassionate…and take responsibility for each other…as long as we can love each other, an remember the feeling of love that we had, we can [leave] without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. You live on in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here…” ~Tuesday’s with Morrie

Again, to steal words – this time of a former JV at orientation – “how beautiful is it to be ablet o say and understand the implication behind ‘Remember, we belong to each other.’” I think that the bottom line of this book is that we do truly belong to each toher. We are beings who inherently seek comfort, security, acceptance, touch and love….The only way to find it is through each other. It is only in giving yourself completely to that which you belong that you may find in all its splendor, that one gift you crave so fervently.


…and so now – I leave you to teach my first class!! OH MY GOONESS GRACIOUS!!!!