Hanging
over my computer, among other things, is something I wrote twelve years ago in
a Random Thought I called "The Heart of Teaching." I read it
every morning. It’s one of my spiritual caffeine kicks that kick
off each day:
How
often and easy it is to leave the human reality of education unrecognized, let
the
fact that people are the key to education go unacknowledged, and ignored the truth
that education is a living thing which requires constant attention to detail,
upkeep,
time, effort, nurturing, nourishing....I think we should think less and feel
more.
We should hear less intellectual talk and more compassion talk. We have
to
exercise our feelings. Feelings have meaning only to the extent that we act on
them.
We have to teach from the heart and with the heart, not just the brain. Each
day
we have to enter class with love and leave it with love...I will go out on the
limb
and say that the absence of heart is the greatest ailment of education. I will
go
even
farther out on the limb and proclaim that the heart of education is an
education
of the heart.
.
I've
been looking especially intently at those words this past week. It was
last Tuesday that this paragraph took on a human face. It was about 5:30
in the afternoon. I was heading home thinking excitedly about how
something new I had tried in class had been a whopping success, but I was
really looking forward to being with Susan and our traditional early evening
relaxing glass of wine. A young lady, whom I didn't know, was sitting on
the concrete bench by the building entrance. As the doors closed behind
me, she got up and rushed over.
"You
Dr. Schmier?" she asked.
“Yeah,”
I answered.
“You
don’t know me, but that doesn’t matter. I read that talk you
gave to the Relay For Life people in the Spectator about you having had
cancer and how you dealt with it. I’ve been waiting for you.
I got to talk with someone. My friends tell me that you’re someone
who cares about students and who I can talk to. I know it’s late,
but do you have a few minutes for me? Please."
I
looked at her tortured face and heard the urgent tone in her voice. Her
teary eyes were pleading. She looked beaten. Susan and the wine
could wait a few minutes.
“Sure.
Let’s go over there and sit down,” I softly replied.
We
went across the pedestrian walk and sat down on a bench. I listened as
she told me with words that still reverberate in my soul, although don’t
hold me to every word.
"I’ve
been feeling a lump in one of my breasts lately. Everyone says I’m
too young for it to be what I fear it is, but I am so scared its cancer.
I'm so afraid my breasts have betrayed me. Everyone says it's probably
nothing. Nothing? They’re crazy! Cancer runs in the
women of my family. My mother had it. My two aunts had it and so
did my grandmother. Cancer has been deadly in my family. Don't
worry? Shit!! I can’t think of nothing else. I
can’t sleep. I have no appetite. I’m afraid to call
home. I've got mid-terms all this week and papers due, but I just don't
give a damn about taking exams, and writing papers. I can’t keep my
mind on studying. I don't care if I pass or failed. I just don't
care. That all seems so unimportant and useless. I told my
boyfriend and he’s no help. He doesn't know what to do or what to
say. No one really does. All he did was to ask me if it was
catching, the asshole. I haven't heard from him in days. I'm
beautiful, but I'm afraid I'll be so ugly. How can I be sexy? Who
will want me? Who will hold me, touch me, and love me? I'm supposed to be
energetic, but I feel so drained. I go the
Before
I could say a word, she blurted out, "And, please, don't send me
away. Don't tell me not to worry until I go a doctor. Don't tell me
to go to a councilor or a support group. Maybe later, but right now I
just need a loving 'cancer friend' who has an idea of what I’m going
through.”
"One
night,” told her quietly, “about two weeks before the operation to
take out my cancerous prostate and two weeks after my wife and I had seen a
high-powered consultant who told us about the probably physical consequences of
the cancer, I lay in bed awake. Like you, I couldn’t think of
anything else. A bunch of stuff was racing through my mind in spite of
the fact that all the doctors told me not to worry. I got up out of bed,
went into the bathroom and got one of my wife’s mirrors. It was
about three in the morning. I took the mirror with me into the living
room to think. Maybe ‘to feel’ is a better term. I had
been conjuring up all evil images of the impact of possible incontinence and
impotence—and death, even though no one really talked about that because
we caught the cancer in its earliest of stages. All the words of all my
well intentioned friends and the doctors weren't much help. I sat on the
sofa. It was pitch black. I was quiet. I held up the mirror
and looked at myself with my heart's eye instead of my mind's eye or my body's
eye. And, I saw myself not physically through my 'eye of the
beholder," but soulfully through my '"I" of the beholder.'
And, in that dark I saw my true beauty and my true humanity. I saw that
no matter what would happen physically, I saw what really mattered. No cancer
could eat away my nobility, sacredness, worth, dignity, spirit, zest, ability,
talent, creativity, imagination. No operation could take out my
enthusiasm for life. That realization of where my true beauty is,
lit up that darkened room. I took a deep breath. Everything was
fine after that. I went back to bed, snuggled up against my wife, and
slept like a baby. And, have been ever since. So, every day I
smile, every day I laugh, every day I dream, every day I see beauty, every day
I see my own beauty, every day I am enthusiastic, every day I am intensely
aware of the preciousness of this day, every day I feel--deeply feel--the joy
of living. They tell me that they got all the cancer out. They tell
me that I am cured. Maybe. But, I don’t surrender to the fear
of what might happen if there’s an errant cancer cell floating around and
growing inside me. I don’t give up this day for fear of what
tomorrow will bring.” I paused and whispered, “Find yourself
a mirror and see if you can find yourself. I can’t think of
anything else to say that doesn’t sound trite.” I paused and
then said in almost a whisper, “I don't know if that helps.”
"Yeah,
it helps,” she signed quietly. “I feel better just because
someone understands and respects my fears. Thank you for being my 'cancer
friend' and telling me how you felt and acted, and not telling me how to feel
and act."
We
talked a bit more and agreed to talk whenever she needed a non-judgmental
soul. I still didn’t know who she was, and still don’t, but
as she walked away, I thought to myself, "Leo Buscaglia was right.
All she was fearfully, and passionately, asking was for a human being to take
her human hand."
And,
so many, far too many, academics think that we classroom academics are not in
the people business? They assert that what happens outside the classroom to
each student has no bearing on what happens inside the classroom and is of no
concern of theirs? They think that what is happening inside each student
doesn't shape his or her performance and is of no concern to theirs? How
wrong they are!
I
slowly got up, walked home in what seemed like slow motion for that now
desperately needed glass of wine, the comfort of my Susan's arms, and the soft
"I love you" that will I knew invariably would flow melodically from
her heart and lips.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis
Schmier
www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of
History
www.newforums.com/L_Schmier.htm
(229-333-5947)
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