Rise and Shine

I rose this morning, but I didn't shine. I tried to embody the spirit of "path seeking," but my eyes weren't quite wide enough to gain the full periphery. I opted for late night writing instead, hoping to spend an entire day immersed in full awareness, listening, engaging, searching.

Every day, we are inundated with opportunities to learn. Whether that learning transpires as the attainment of knowledge, or through an awareness of self, or it is embodied in some philosophical concept that suddenly presents itself through the course of various interactions--those opportunities are there if we let them strike us. On any given day, if we take the time, any one of us could ascertain some deeper meaning about what that day offered. Obviously some days present more meaning than others, but some sort of meaning would be evident if we committed ourselves to discovering it.

The problem is that we often rise and shine and run. We dart down paths with out delving into the dirt that paves them. We rush to the end point looming in the distance, and if someone asks us to explain what that point is, few of us could articulate what we are chasing. The end of the day? Friday night? January 1? The start of summer? Our wedding day? Landmark birthdays? Retirement? Our golden anniversary? Death?

Today, I spent almost every moment outside of the classroom grading. In nearly 70% of the essays I read, my students identified that their primary motivation for getting good grades is pleasing their parents and getting into a good college so they could ultimately land a good job. They fear what the news tells them: jobs are scarce and they better be pretty darn fantastic if they plan to go anywhere. While their goals seem very similar to the goals I would have identified, the desperation lining them broke my heart. The number of kids with anxiety disorders and depression seems to rise every year. While the media covers the effect of the recession on adults without jobs, I see very little about how it is affecting kids. I see very little out there encouraging them to smile and laugh and play. I see very little about the resilience of the American spirit. I see nothing telling them that they are supposed to make mistakes and learn from them. These kids are not in the category of failing students; these kids are some of the brightest kids I've ever seen.

While it is nice to rise and shine and recognize that all paths are ours to seek, sometimes we need to know that mistakes can help make us who we are. They show us what we need to learn, what we need to see, what we need to do. They inspire us. They move us. They help us appreciate our successes. That never changes. Not with a recession or a depression or a job crunch. Our failures--or at least our willingness to risk failure and grow from failure--helps us to saunter down our path at a pace where instincts can come alive, where we can bend down slowly and dip our fingers into the dirt. Where we can feel. Where we can think. Where we can actually seek.