Salve, NIP!
About six
weeks ago, I stood in my brother’s kitchen as we were visiting his family in North
Carolina. Brad and I were having a conversation about life in general when he
said something that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since: “you are
wasting your potential,” he told me. By that he meant that I am wasting my
potential as a teacher. He thinks I should be doing bigger and better things;
he tells me he could get me a job at Intel for my writing skills alone, and
that I would make a lot more money doing so. I sincerely thank him for looking
out for me in this way, but I could not disagree with him more about his
statement. Sure, there are probably others numbered among my family and friends
who think the very same thing, and though I respect their opinions I doubt I
would ever not be a teacher. It speaks to me, especially my heart. I cannot put
into words how much I love to learn and share my learning with others. It truly
is my dharma, my duty, my vocation, my calling. I believe if I were to do anything
else that did not involve learning and sharing what little wisdom I have, I
would not be as fulfilled.
School
began this week. Though I wasn’t as excited to go back to school this year for
reasons I could not quite put my finger on, by the end of the first week I realized
that it was all of the peripheral aspects (i.e. all that teaching requires
outside the classroom) that had made me feel that way. And while there is a
great deal of that still lingering outside of my door, those 300 minutes per
day I am standing in front of my students and discussing ideas with them is
borderline blissful. Sure some of them might think I’m a weird guy/teacher, but
regardless of what they or others think, deep within my heart I believe this is what I am meant to do.
As with last year, I am
teaching AP Human Geography, Philosophy Honors, and World Religions. Our school’s
data processor (who creates the schedules) set mine up in a way so that I have
all of my Philosophy Honors classes this fall, followed by World Religions in
the spring. During this past week, then, we were covering the first chapter of
the philosophy textbook, which is a general introduction to the academic study
of philosophy, its aims, sub-disciplines, etc. On the second day of class, the
students and I talked about how philosophy deals with “big” questions and I
solicited the students for examples. Various classes brought up most of the same
ones, and perhaps the one question that was repeated the most (in one guise or
another) was “what is the meaning/purpose of life?” I have structured the class
in a way that allows students to share their input with others as much as
possible, as I feel a philosophy class should be driven primarily by dialogue.
For our final activity on Friday, I returned to the meaning question and gave
the students 5 minutes to write out their own personal meaning of life in their
journals; when the time elapsed, I facilitated the sharing of their ideas by
calling on students and letting them build off each other's responses. It was
a great moment, to say the least. Though they’re only juniors and seniors in
high school, they had some great answers. Everyone took the question seriously,
wrestled with it, and wrote something beautiful in that whatever it was they
had chosen to say was genuine and heartfelt. In two of the three classes,
though, the timer went off and there was still two minutes or so and the
students began demanding that I share my own “meaning of life.” I said a few words
on the spot, but knew they had only skimmed the surface of what I felt in my
own heart. So I’ve been thinking about this idea for the last two days, and now
here I am on my couch in the early hours of Sunday morning writing this letter
to you, NIP.
I will be 37 years old this
coming Wednesday. Though I certainly don’t think of myself as “old,” I am
undoubtedly getting older. Hopefully in this process I have also gotten wiser.
I feel that I have, mainly because I have been grounded in philosophy and
religion for the last 14 years or so (when I went back to college). And yet
that is only partially true. People used to think it was surprising that I
became a Religious Studies major; just as my brother Brad questions my choice
of teaching now, some family and friends questioned my choice/field of study back
then. Many told me it was a useless/worthless degree. I simply feel those
people have the wrong view of education in general. I’ve always felt (and tell
my students this all the time) that education is about improving oneself—gaining
knowledge in order to become a wiser person—not simply to yield a particular
career and a predetermined level of income. Even when these people broached
their concerns with me, I didn’t have a satisfactory answer as to why I wanted
to know more about religion (or philosophy). I now know that the reason I didn’t
have a satisfactory answer is due to one simple fact that I didn’t comprehend
at the time: I didn’t have an answer because all I had were questions.
Looking back on my life now,
though, I have started to realize why I chose that field. It was something that
I didn’t realize until a little over three years ago, around the time I began
my yoga practice and, shortly after that, my meditation practice. Both of these
disciplines have given me the mental space and quietude to search the depths of
my heart with little interference from my ever-analytical mind. Because below
that teeming sea of incessantly-churning thoughts, the ground of being has
given me glimpses of what I believe to be the truth. One part of that truth
that I recognize now is that studying religion was no simple whim. The fact is I have always been fascinated with the
concept of the sacred. One of the first movies my mother ever took me to
see in the theater was the original Clash
of the Titans, after which I became enamored with all things related to Greek
mythology. I even thought I was a distant cousin to Perseus, as ridiculous as
that may seem now. Of course, this increasing fascination disturbed my mother
and she did her best to inculcate me into Roman Catholicism, the family faith.
She bought me an illustrated book of Bible stories, much of which was centered
on Jesus and the New Testament, but also rife with central narratives from the
Old Testament as well, such as Noah’s Ark, Moses and the Egyptian exodus, David
and Goliath, etc. And I greedily gobbled those stories up and sought for more.
This continued throughout much of my life, only the scope of the search
continued to widen and brought me into contact with other faith traditions, other
founders, other narratives.
Being steeped in religions from
all parts of the world, I cannot choose one over another. There is too much
wisdom from disparate cultures and epochs for me to personally elevate one
above the rest. Whether one may or may not agree with my personal perspective
is a choice I leave to you, NIP, but I respect all religions. In the same
breath, however, I feel that I have transcended them in some way. I do not
partake in any organized religion, yet I feel I worship every day through
mindful meditation and prayer. I try my best to read at least a few chapters of
the synoptic Gospels or slokas of the Bhagavad Gita every day. Though I am no
fan of labels due to their limitations, I suppose I am functionally a Buddhist
yet substantively a Jesusist. I will always feel grounded in Christianity as it
was my first faith, but as a student of life and all religions I feel as if my
own beliefs have become syncretistic, an amalgam of spiritual commonalities
expressed by many different cultures throughout space and time.
So what have I learned thus far?
I think the
ground of being, the meaning of life, for me, is bearing witness. Bearing
witness to what? The wonder. The wonder that perpetually surrounds us yet we
continually crowd out with our human tendency toward pettiness and arrogance.
We think we know everything but the truth is we know hardly anything at all (if
it is even possible to “know” anything). Science is important and my love of
learning has had me chasing down as much of that knowledge as possible, too,
but as any quantum physicist will tell you, the very fabric of our materialist
view of the universe is being undone. Even Einstein was aware that there is a
great deal of mystery that we have not (and perhaps cannot) been able to
penetrate with our finite comprehension of life and its workings. And this is precisely
the point! Everywhere we train our senses we are surrounded by mystery, by the
sublime, by sheer awe. But then in our intellectual hubris we label phenomena
and somehow think we have understood it. As I said in the Honor Court Banquet
presentation this past spring, the miraculous and mundane are one and the same.
Don’t analyze the flowers, the trees, the clouds, the breeze, the small child
smiling as s/he walks hand in hand with a parent, a shared hug with a loved
one. None of these things have anything to do with the mind, but with the
spirit, with the essence of what makes us human. As I’ve said in past letters
like “Think Cosmically,” it doesn’t matter whether you approach the mystery of
life from a theistic or scientific angle, either way we are left with one
simple fact—it is a miracle to be alive and experiencing all of this wonder. To
me, this is the starting point. We have to recognize that we are alive and never
take that fact for granted. Every breath should be a celebration, a chance to
revel in the mystery and wonder that surrounds us every single second. Do not
be distracted by the siren song of things we prize in our society—money, fame,
accomplishments, all of these things are transitory on a cosmic scale. At some
point in the distant future it is very likely that humanity will not exist,
whether through nuclear annihilation (let’s face it, if history has taught us
anything it’s that we love to conquer and kill each other) or the sun’s life
cycle getting to the Red Giant phase and consuming planet Earth (don’t worry,
that’s about 4.5 billion years from now), so we have to do our best to
appreciate the time we have been given with family and friends on this amazing
planet pulsing with life and mystery.
If bearing
witness to the wonder is the first step, then appreciation of all life and its
interconnected web is the second. I am human, as it says in the blog’s
description, I’m just a regular guy trying to reach out to others and make a
difference. This means that I make mistakes, I am not perfect, no one is. And
yet it is precisely this realization that has allowed me to become a better
teacher. I tell my students that the only difference between them and me is
age. I am older and, hopefully, a little bit wiser. In an effort to become a
better person I have been diligently working on cultivating five crucial
qualities in my life over the last three years: love, compassion, gratitude,
generosity, and patience. Each day when I begin my yoga practice I reflect on
these five along with my gratitude mantra (see “Gratitude for the Here and Now”),
and then think about them again each time I sit or lie down to meditate. Having
studied the sacred in many of its forms, these five qualities seem to be the
cardinal virtues that all of them espouse. I was gladdened this past Friday to
hear so many of my students in philosophy mention love as a central tenet in
their own “meaning of life” responses. It is the first on my list as well,
mainly because it is the fecund, nurturing soil from which the other
characteristics sprout and grow. I do my personal best to love everyone because
I intuit it is the right thing to do; I know it in my heart, not my head, if
that makes sense. I feel I am a much better person than I was several years
ago, but I still have so much work to do. I am still a work-in-progress, and
perhaps will be for my entire life—but at least I recognize this fact and am
consciously, actively trying to be a better person each and every day. More
importantly, by realizing that I am imperfect with all of my idiosyncratic
faults and foibles, it’s easier to love others freely because I know they have
their own in turn.
Because we
are all struggling in our own right, the third aspect that gives my life so
much meaning is service. Now we have come full circle. By witnessing wonder and
appreciating life, I realize that love is my highest aim. And the way in which
this is most easily expressed and purposefully shared is by focusing on “the
other.” The positive changes I’ve managed to institute in my life over the last
several years combined with all of the religion and philosophy I’ve studied and
pondered over my entire life has left me with one overriding impulse—to help
others. This is why it is my dharma to be a teacher, to write these letters, to
help whoever is in need of a kind word or a good deed. I’ve come to a point in
my life where I have truly learned to love and accept myself (admittedly,
however, I don’t think I would be in said position if it weren’t for my
wonderful wife, Erin, and our rewarding marriage), and it was only after I was
grounded in my own self-love that I learned to love others openly. I firmly
believe that we must love ourselves before we can love others. Not in a way
that gratifies or aggrandizes the ego (in fact, I think much of what I have
been trying to do for the last three years is efface the ego in order to let
more love out), but in a way that allows for a calm acceptance of our
individual strengths and an acknowledgement of personal shortcomings. We all
have them after all. My mission, therefore, is to serve others by helping them
realize they too are worthy of love. We are all witnesses to this wonderful
life and I want to do my best to help people recognize that simple fact.
I know this
is an inordinately long letter. I thank you if you’ve read all the way through
it, NIP. The funny thing is this, though—none of these words have come close to
expressing what I feel each day when I wake, each moment I share with other
people, each breath I mindfully take. I guess my personal meaning of life is
ineffable. It is meant to be experienced rather than explained. If you’re one
of my students, I’m sure you have recognized this in our interactions. Sure
some people might label me as “weird” but I don’t particularly care. Words will
never capture the essence of what I feel or who I am. All I know is that I have
much work to do to become a better person. This is the only life that I get (as
far as I know with my extremely limited, finite understanding) so I will
continue to cherish this incredible, miraculous gift by sharing what little
wisdom I have gleaned from life thus far. I hope that these letters have
brought you some measure of solace and hope with whatever challenges you face
in your individual life.
What’s the meaning of your life, NIP?
- Ryan
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