I was thinking of going back to my unfinished fourth "one thing for a student to learn" about stress when I got a short, private message on FaceBook.  The four sentences read, "Just wanted to let you know that I married her, and I'm stilling 'continuing' with small steps.  Our conversations when I was a freshman are still changing my life.  I am a better person and businessman because of them.  I and many others thank you for touching me the way you did."
	I look at those words as I slowly reread and read the words.  I hadn't thought about that student or those conversations of ours in fifteen years.  I do now, and it's surprising how well I remember them.  I wrote back, "Thank you. It's a nice way to start the day.  But, say 'thank you' to yourself as well.  You, not me or the conversations, touched yourself and are really changing your life.  I only helped you to ask the questions.  You came up with the answers and chose to live by them."
	After that exchange, I slowly got up from the computer, got a fresh cup of coffee, and went out to sit by the koi pond.  The inner warmth I felt insulated me from the dawn's 45 degree chill.  I just sat there, looking at the graceful rhythms of the koi, listening to the sedate music of the waterfalls, and thought.  Deeply thought.  I thought of something Rabbi David Hartman once said:  each of us is part of society while being unique and apart from it.  You know we in higher education have all these legalism, rituals, ceremonies.  We have technology; we have lectures, tests, grades, degrees, honors.  All are directed towards credentialism, towards profession, title, wallet, house, car, clothes, travel.  Trappings!
	But, what is education really all about if it doesn't help connect those two poles of being a part of and apart from.  I believe education becomes meaningful when it becomes the anchor in the concrete, everyday intimacies of your life, intimately way beyond and far deeper than the surface roles, possessions, and institutions.  I feel a Micah 6:8 moment coming on.
	The idea of an education is not truth, but possibilities.   Education unlocked and opens doors to walk through; it lifts up window sashes to let the fresh air in.  The essence of an education is potential.  The concept of an education should not arrival, but journey.  It doesn't get you there; you never "have it."  An education is something like paraphrasing what it says somewhere in Psalms:  joyful are those who seek, not those who find.  Education doesn't give you final, search-ending, absolute truths--final, search-ending, absolute truths.
	What were those conversations about?  Well, that student, whom I'll call Sam, had come to me after class one day and told me that he "got" one of my "Schmier's Words for the Day" of the class before:  "Prejudice separates.  Respect unites."  
	"I'm not prejudice anymore," Sam proudly proclaimed.
	I asked him when did he "get it?"  He told me the day after I wrote those words on the whiteboard and we briefly discussed them, tying them in with the Jim Crow laws and suffragism we were working on.  
	"That great," I remember telling. "Now tell me, what did you believe about yourself and others, and how did you act the day before you 'got it'?  What did you believe about yourself and others, and how did you act the days after that in your community, with your friends, and in your fraternity brothers after you 'got it'?  Was there any difference in the way you lived before you 'got it,' in the way you thought, felt, spoke, and acted after you 'got it'?"
	He looked at me in a dazed confusion.  And, we talked, talked a lot about prejudice, toleration, and respect. We talked.   He constantly wrote about this issues in his daily journal.  I often responded.  We talked and wrote each other continuously throughout the semester. We talked about the ease of saying words, the search to understand what those words meant, and the challenge of living by them.   We talked and wrote a lot about African-Americans, women, homosexuals, people with other religious views, people with other ethnic differences, his upbringing, his family, his friends, his fraternity brothers, his "secret" African-American girlfriend, her circle of "others."  We talked and wrote about my personal experiences.   I remember once writing him in reply to a journal entry something like, "I know it's hard. But, you know I learned that it is always tough to begin, to start doing; it never eases up; it's just as tough to continue doing.  And, this may sound trite, but it's true:  a small step on a great journey is not by any stretch of the imagination small anymore.  I treat each step as a great journey in itself just as a day to me is a lifetime.  I've been building my happiness piece by piece for the last ten years, one little joy by one little joy, and will continue until they bury me."  
	That's my measure for the purpose and "cash value" of an education.  If a turned-on educational lightbulb doesn't illuminate the way to an authentic, better, deeper, fuller, joyful, and meaningful living and loving life, what's it for?
	Sam is another one little step one little joy, neither of which are little, I can add to my journey.
Make it a good day

-Louis-


Louis Schmier                         		http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org       
203 E. Brookwood Pl                         http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta, Ga 31602 
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