I see ‘em!

Today I saw a wonderful video of some teachers in the US giving students a performance-based task. It involved Primary 3 students imagining that they were unhappy with life in England in the past and wanting to travel to The New World (The U.S.) to find a new life. The teacher assessing them as they brought a box of belongings on their trip was to pretend to be the Majesty at the ‘High Courts’.

I witnessed a boy pleading his case that (I quote) ‘he does not want to believe what the court wants him to believe and he wants to believe what he wants to believe’ and hence wants to go to The New World to live the life he wants. His shoe box had a scroll map of his sea-faring route and he showed a rudimentary mini-icecream stick hut to the court, saying that he was a carpenter and could make his living there - the house was proof of his skill. The teacher couldn’t say no to his plea and ‘let him go on his way’ - he passed.

I found myself tearing slightly. Strangely enough I couldn’t articulate it. Sometimes moments exist where waves of emotion overwhelm us - though it is the impression of this vast sea and not each individual crest’s rise and fall that we can discern. Was there a single reason to be moved?

Part of it is, I believe, the great hope and requited happiness when we see the joy in a child succeed and love every step of the learning process. It is this common fount of goodwill that we tap from when we feel for the humanity in others. Perhaps more often than not, teachers have great opportunities to make such a difference in a classroom where many lives are sprouting or buried.

Another part is perhaps the tempered sadness in knowing what would be the expected response of my classmates and myself in implementing such a program of assessment. It is just too hard, too impossible. It is almost unimaginable, the logistics involved in planning the activity. Instead of inspiring us, the video could instead completely flatten us as we raise these walls in defense. Our guilt was apparent in failing ourselves in the task even before it begun. We saw no hope and crushed the messenger.

Essentially this is not a new thing, difficulty in doing whatever we find meaningful. Be it laziness to pick up a piece of rubbish or something like not participating in gossip of a friend. However, reality often introduces its hard sidewalk and grinds us into it. As a teacher of mine said today: ‘you need not walk the complete route -left or right. You can walk the middle path, taking from each (the right and left). She used it in another context but I find it applies here.

Often when faced with something daunting, we either completely reject it or face it bare-faced. The problem is not in rejecting it but finding excuses for rejecting it. There is a tendency like in this instance to completely beat down the video that we saw and deem it unrealistic, impossible. But I guess even if we can attempt and try it just for a moment, and then fail… that is most important.

I realise now why I had teared. It is the usual story actually. You have heard it before. "What is most important is to try". I think I was tearing because I was entertaining these doubt and I was tearing for what would my students think of a teacher that had given up on trying before he had even begun. It was a tear for them - and maybe myself.

I guess what I am saying is a cliche  but we must fight our resistance towards cliches. Cliches are always around and abound because what they say are true. It is just that we see them with old eyes and a sneer of knowing without understanding. That is one reason I write this. I hope to look at the truism with refreshed eyes.

Sometimes tears need not make vision fog - tears can clear vision too.

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Indulge me a little. This reminds me of a short story from ‘The Sandman’. It is 10 pages long - short for a comic; but I will never forget its message.

It tells of a guy writing a play and he backs out from it the last moment, anxious about the audience’s reaction. He has always had nightmares of climbing up a steep precipice and falling (the psychoanalysts will have a field-day here). However, he never dares to complete this dream of hitting the bottom. The night before the play commences he has the same dream again. He always forces himself to wake up before hitting the ground. He knows that if he hits the ground somehow he will die, his mind will die. In his encounter with the Sandman, he finds the Prince of Dreams at the top of the cliff again - and he falls… off…

<mid-air>

This is their conversation:

Man: It’s all getting to be too much for me. I feel I’m out of depth. I’m scared. I’m scared I’m going to do something stupid.

Sand: And if you do something stupid, what then?

Man: Aren’t you scared of falling?

Sand: It is sometimes a mistake to climb; it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt.

Man: What are you saying? That I should ought to go back to the show? Not walk out? You’re just a dream. Listen, I’ve made up my mind.

Sand: If you do not climb you will not fall. This is true. But is it that bad to fail, that hard to fall?

Sometimes you wake, and sometimes, yes, you die. But there is a third alternative.

<as the man falls through the air>

Man: And I’m about to wake myself up, when… And I stayed with it. And I didn’t wake up. And I didn’t die.

SOMETIMES YOU FLY. SOMETIMES YOU FALL.

What is the third alternative?

<He is tumbling, falling through air, space>

Man: I met someone who changed my mind about alot of things. Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. AND SOMETIMES WHEN YOU FALL, YOU FLY.

(wow! borrow the book from me, you won’t regret it!)

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Amazing ain’t it. Often in life there are times of weakness and times when we feel charged as if all of humanity is behind us in our purpose. The thing is to often surround ourselves with opportunities to inspire ourselves and people who will do so to us. Then we will falter less.

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