My friend Delaine sent this to add to the dialogue here on the blog. Delaine and I were honors
thesis partners during 2010-2011. We met regularly for lunch
and long passionate conversations about what we believe education should be, how we might help create that, and anything else that spiraled out from there. Delaine has always done so much to remind me of what matters. She teaches math now at an inner city high school. I can't begin to express how much I respect her work and her deep care.
by Delaine W.
This piece is inspired by an afternoon
conversation I had with a student.
“Do
you have any siblings?”
“Yeah,
I have two. and step-brothers, but, my daddy never sees us anymore. He only
cares about his new kids. I used to be upset, but now I guess that’s how it is.
I wish I lived with my auntie.”
“Why
is that?”
“I
dunno. I just wish she was still alive. She wasn’t supposed to be there. They
just shot the house and her. She was addicted to drugs. She went there for the
drugs. I was just a kid then. I think if I lived with her she would see me. and
stop. because of me.”
“Oh
baby. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry this world isn’t better. I’m so sorry I cannot
speak from a place of understanding. Does that make it impossible for me to
help you? Do you have a scar burned so deep that no one can heal it? What will
that scar do to you? Will it get infected and need drugs to ease the pain? What
about a hug? Will a hug help? Will
my humanity help? What will help?”
The questions won’t stop coming and the
tears are at my eyes. But all tears do is mess up your make-up and leave you
thirsty. Maybe that’s it. Maybe we need to be thirsty and messed up. Maybe we
need to feel each other’s pain so personally that we cry. and do not shy away
from the thirst and blemishes tears bring. but rather we take up these
discomforts with our fellow sisters and brothers and get so thirsty together.
with imperfections laid bare. no make-up. that we truly see each other and will
fight for our thirst. OUR
thirst. our thirst.
wow. chills down the spine and goosebumps on my shoulders
ReplyDeleteYou know sometimes we think we can save someone from their own distruction, but I have and still try so hard to help my son battle with his addictions. Always thinking what if this or what if that would make a difference enough to make him quit. I am a person that carries other peoples burdens especially those I love so very much. And I have and still am trying so hard not to do that because it has consumed me so much to the point of me getting physically sick. I try to remind myself I cannot save anyone in this world only God can, I can only be there for them. I may be saying all this but at the same time I know it is not easy to just let situations take their course. I do know one thing we all need someone to love us and make us feel that we are so very important and do so in return.
ReplyDeleteI deeply sympathize with your efforts to help your son overcome his addictions. And it is so true that we all need people to love us and to give love to, as you say.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, it's important to realize that there is not any set course in situations. These things are largely determined by the structure of the system. It's not so much about individually saving someone as it is about working together to change the conditions. Our society puts a lot of emphasis on heroic individuals or on individual choice, but when we see that addictions and violence are much more rampant for the poor and for those who are in various ways marginalized in this society, we see that the idea of individual choice or one person doing the saving can be a distraction.
Think about, for example, the effect that prison has on someone, the trauma that they carry from experiencing and seeing who knows that while in there. Then think about how our judicial systems imprison people of color so disproportionately to their percentage in U.S. society. And there are books and ample evidence showing that for the same crimes, the rates of imprisonment are drastically different. Think also about the differences in how people are treated in schools because of their ethnicity and/or socioeconomic status. Think of the living conditions brought on by economic struggles.
There is a profound lack of meaning in mainstream society, a sense that there is mostly only selfishness to try for, or at most, trying to get the best of life only for ourselves and our own. Many times, people center their lives around buying stuff and a kind of 'fun' that is not meaningful. But when we work together on bigger, more transformative goals, then people may find a reason to fight harder against addictions or to love people even as they battle them (as you do). There has to be a sense of "we're all in this together."
The realities glimpsed in Delaine's piece are all bound to larger realities and not an individual failing in the person. I believe that this "thirst" must lead us to demand better from ourselves and our society. I think we feel individually consumed by these things when we only go at them from a private, individual standpoint. But the "thirst" and the tears that she writes of mean people coming together as they are, with their pains, their addictions, their psychological problems, their flaws, and speaking of the dreams they almost have given up on, and actively caring for each other. Peace and love, my friend....
Well, I was thinking more about what you, the person who commented before me, wrote. I'm sorry if my response seemed to sound like a lecture. It's heartbreaking to see people we love or become close to struggle and suffer, and be in dangerous situations. I think that being there for each other does in a sense save us every day, and that you are saving him in that way.
ReplyDeleteAnd Delaine, thanks again for what you wrote. I have been thinking about it a lot.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking a lot more about this post. I was just now thinking that what you're describing in there, Delaine, is listening to someone in pain and then wanting to know how to comfort that person, how to help, and how in turn you feel your own pain at realizing how hurt that person is, and at not knowing if your response can be adequate. And really, in what you're describing, that person's pain is likewise connected to another person's - the auntie who was struggling with addictions and whatever pains were all mixed up with that - and then the loss of that person. And what I love about your post is that comforting that you are describing, which so many of us need so badly, really, and which too few get. Many of us just have to comfort ourselves, but that inward turn makes us less able to be vulnerable with others, less able to be comforted in all the future, and less able to comfort others. And mixed in with that is that yearning, that thirst as you say, and instead of telling each other all the time that we'd better get it together and harden up and do what it takes, maybe we should be consoling each other and admitting that we all crave something better than this icy or burning meanness, that we all need a hug, really, and need each other's humanity.
ReplyDeleteAlso, we were talking last night in class about how capitalism makes such a separation between the public and the private. (In another sense, this has broken down when the display of the private is a commodity-spectacle as in the reality shows and talk shows that were popular for a while, but that isn't the genuine private, either - not the same as real human contact and relationship). But anyway, I was thinking about how the role of the teacher - a role that you, Delaine, are in with the student - is so confusing for both the teacher and the student. It's a figure that stands over that chasm really between public and private. And the dominant thinking is that the teacher is supposed to remain somewhat distanced and aloof, in order to grade and discipline and maintain authority over the students. There is this idea of acting 'professionally,' and not becoming too emotionally involved. And the whole structure is based on that sort of thing. It keeps shifting the students so that it's impossible. And I think it creates a lot of wounded students and wounded teachers, all of whom become less able to comfort each other and others. But then there are those teachers who decide to reach out and enact humanity and comfort and be vulnerable themselves, too, and that is when there is hope. What is really hard, too, is when we run up against our disagreements with each other, and feel not understood, and feel that the other person is wounding us even more by trying to speak their way to their truths and express their thirst. It's so hard to really HEAR each other. I think you are so right, Delaine, that to really do that requires the willingness to reveal ourselves. Anyway, I just keep thinking about this because of how it struck me and because of so many things going on in my life or lives of people I care about, and trying to figure out my feelings and ideas about education at all levels, something that I care about on such a personal level. Thank you again for writing this.
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