The Power of Story

I love my job today.

I believe sharing authentic stories is the secret to connection. Every semester, I assign the This I Believe essay as a way to help students practice creative nonfiction writing. Every semester, we read these aloud in class together. Every semester, I have the honour of encountering again the strength of the human spirit, the kindness that so many of us strive toward, and also the weight of suffering so many are asked to endure. And it's not just me, I look around the room at the close of class and see people smiling at each other, really smiling, some suspiciously shiny eyes, and people saying, "Wow, I had no idea...". One student today said, "I LOVE how I'm feeling right now, just full of love for humanity." I couldn't say it better.

We read our essays in class today. In one class alone, I have students from Bangladesh, the Philippines, Colombia, Bolivia, and Nigeria, not to mention from around the United States. They wrote about believing in choosing courage over comfort or how raising a difficult dog taught the nature of real patience or the belief that we ought to spend time with the people we love before too late. 

One of my favourite essays this year (though I love them all!)  focused on how, in Tagalog, the words for "love" and "expensive" are the same. He wrote about first love and learning that, when we say, "I love you," what we are really saying is, "Loving you requires sacrifices of time and effort and, most of all, ego. You are worth every bit of that effort."

Another student wrote about the day her mother was sent to prison. She was bewildered, 12, and being grilled in the courtroom. When the lawyer asked her who had brought her to the scene in question, she took a moment and replied, "The car." She got laughs and learned that humour could carry her through the most challenging moments in life.

Another wrote about coming to the United States alone and struggling to fit in with the weight of isolation almost unbearable, at first. As she read about calling her mother to ask about how to shop for groceries, she broke down in tears. I saw the face of another student who has shared his nativist beliefs with the class on a prior occasion visibly soften in response. He understood her explanation of the courage she had had to exercise.

The last essay of the day was read by a young woman I can only describe as a waif: fragile, pink-haired, and with a discernible wounding behind her eyes. In a timid voice, she began sharing how her caregivers taught her from a young age that she could not make good decisions--that she was not smart enough for college, not strong enough for the air force, and should focus on learning how to be a good wife. So she did. She married her first boyfriend and endured years of abuse, turning to alcoholism as a refuge. When she got to the part of the story when she made the decision to leave the abuse, her body language changed--her voice got stronger and more emphatic. She explained that she decided to start college and believes everyone  ought to have the freedom to choose their own path. The room almost broke out in cheers as she finished.

Emily Esfahani Smith, in her book The Power of Meaning, argues that one central pillar of meaning in our lives is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. I agree, but I also think there's a communal aspect to our life stories that she perhaps misses. When our stories move out of our heads and hearts into a shared space, we forge powerful bonds of belonging to each other, another pillar of meaning. Ask students for their stories and share your own! I teach writing, yes, but the accompanying exploration of what it means to be human is at least as important.

Humanities Education

 

Skidaway Island, GA, 2020

I'm resurrecting this blog to help me continue to reimagine learning!

To paraphrase Rumi, out beyond ideas of left-doing and right-doing, there is a community college classroom. I will meet you there. Most of my students work at least thirty hours a week. Some are veterans. Some are recent immigrants. Coming to class often requires courage and sacrifice. On this less ideologically charged ground, students of all colors, creeds, and many nations meet as they encounter the Humanities (mostly) from a place of working for a fresh start.

We’re talking about the power of networks this week in my Introduction to Humanities classes, specifically how the Humanities explore tension between individuals and the various systems we inhabit. Class began with the Katie Melua song, “Spider’s Web,” which asks, “If a black man is racist, is it okay, if it’s a white man’s racism that made him that way?” This song always leads to a discussion of the degree to which we are accountable for our own attitudes and actions. I expand the question to include other common networks like family or gender (If a woman mistreats men, is it okay, if it’s a man’s sexual violence that made her that way? Or, if an adult has frequent angry outbursts, is it okay, if it’s domestic violence that made them that way?) Of course, there are assumptions in the question, and bright students immediately begin naming them or parsing the word “okay”. The point of beginning with the song is to spark discussion and to get at how the Humanities endlessly explore these sorts of questions. The point also is that the song begins class with a question, not a position. 

This week’s discussions fed my soul in the way they exposed students to each other’s experience: there was the young Black woman who insisted that, while not okay, reverse racism is understandable, given the way that the Black community’s collective voice is still being attacked, for example, through recent redistricting efforts. Or the Indonesian student who shared the national motto in his home country: “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika” or “Together in our differences,” an effort to move beyond ethnic, language, and religious divisions. Within the (to me!) sacred space of the classroom, it was also possible for the white military veteran now in his forties to share how, as an electrician in recent years, he needed an armed guard to enter certain neighbourhoods in Chicago and Milwaukee and still received race-related threats. Or the white gay student to share how traumatic it can be to be on the receiving end of someone else’s race-related trauma when you already are trying desperately to carry your own troubles. Sure, there was tension in the room and students realised that they saw the problem differently, but we were able to talk about trying to cultivate a posture of understanding, where we work to understand each other. Students also established common ground around needing to own our actions even if it can be harder to control our attitudes. We had a beautiful, rich, honest conversation about the very topics that I read every day are tearing the nation apart. I need Americans to know that it’s possible and happening in some Humanities classrooms!

Our discussion laid the groundwork for examining three related pieces: First, a short talk by the Dalai Lama on interdependence—how, even if we are selfish, it makes sense to care about helping to solve other people’s problems, as it will make our own life more peaceful. Second, John Donne’s brilliant Meditation XVII, on how none of us are islands, how “…any man’s death diminishes me, for I am a part of all mankind.” I’ve found that reading these older pieces aloud makes them come alive for students. And, finally, Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s poem, “Solitude”. This last helps students think about what part of themselves remains unseen and ultimately unknowable even to those closest to them. They leave class hopefully more aware that others have tried to understand how to be both an individual and a member of communities and networks, that there is wisdom to be found. In this Florida-wide General Education course, beyond the analysis and synthesis skills we cultivate, I work to plant seeds of curiosity about and confidence in working with the Humanities as a set of disciplines. 

In my little corner of the non-elite academic universe, Humanities education is alive and, I believe, critical to our American future. We must commit ourselves to equipping young people in this way to navigate a complex society facing complex problems. Their homework involved reflecting on the southern African (Zulu) philosophy of Ubuntu. I’m confident that students will come back next week with a great deal to say!

Does this approach work? Here are just a few comments last semester’s students made as they finished the course, in response to the question, “How will you use what you’ve learned in this course to shape a good life for yourself?”

Ultimately, shaping a good life means integrating everything I have learned from philosophy, psychology, literature, art, and my own lived experience into a life of purpose. Aristotle gives me direction, Frankl gives me meaning, wabi-sabi gives me acceptance, Housman gives me urgency, and jazz gives me flexibility. Together, they help me understand that a good life is not something I find; it is something I build.

I have borrowed light from everyone in this class; Frankl, Varty, Musashi, Chief Seattle, Heschel, Achebe; and what you are supposed to do with borrowed light is pass it along in a form more useful than you found it. I think I am on the right road. But I am still checking.

Taken together, the good life to which I’m striving is one that’s well-rounded. It includes

fulfilling work that has practical application and is grounded in Aristotelian notions of virtue. It

includes living lightly on the earth and using the ethical framework that Leopold developed in

his land ethic. It includes scheduling time for creativity using skills and ideas gleaned from the

arts and Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow. It includes cultivating deep, authentic connections

using principles from both Seligman and hooks. It includes maintaining a strong sense of

meaning and purpose using tenets from both Frankl and Camus. The humanities: philosophy,

literature, psychology, and the visual arts haven’t given me the answers to happiness. What they have provided, instead, is better questions, more refined language, and some great company as I think.

I can never predict exactly in which ideas or works of art or music a student might find inspiration and meaning. I am humbled every semester by students who uncover new layers of meaning in a poem I’ve read hundreds of times or new connections across time or different regions of the world. There’s an exquisite humanity in holding this shared experience of discovery for each new group of students. We can’t afford to get so caught up in ideological turf wars over Humanities education that we fail the actual, post-Covid, anxiety-filled, exhausted humans who desperately need what the Humanities from all times and places offer: wisdom, knowledge, comfort, provocation, and an understanding of how we got here. Along with how we might move forward.