Ahimsa: Taking My Own Ripe Journey

The eight yamas and niyamas are a set of yogic guidelines that are similar in purpose to Christianity’s Ten Commandments.  Both serve as a set of rules or laws that support the functioning of relationships and society through tasking the individual to act in certain ways.  However, the yamas and niyamas are not undergirded by the threat of “Thou shalt not…” with the implication being “Or else!”  There is nobody to be afraid of with these restraints, whereas the Ten Commandments are based on the fear of God’s—and by extension, society’s—wrath. 

This is a good thing, because if ahimsa, which is often translated to “nonviolence,” were an actual law, I would be on Death Row.    I violate it multiple times a day toward myself, hopefully less often toward others.  For me, this translates into the fear of not being good enough and not doing enough.  One result is that I have become a slave to my planner and email inbox.   Deborah Adele talks about this very thing: “I had created a violent inner world of pushing, overdoing and under-sleeping…” which leads to this:  “…how we treat ourselves is in truth how we treat those around us.  If you are a taskmaster with yourself, others will feel your whip.” 

I believe that these pressures are not just personality traits that she and I share, but are also deeply political.  The emotions I feel are partially internal, but they are also external, resulting from gendered and cultural forces outside myself.  For example, there is the guilt for not meeting certain expectations for professional women, like being good at my job, having a clean house, and being nice, all on the same day.  That pressure, and then the subsequent anxiety, anger, and guilt at not living up to some invisible, unreachable standard, are socially driven.  Thus, that violence I commit against myself, and subsequently others as I take the role of stern taskmaster, is fed upon by socially constructed cues about what it means to be a woman, a teacher educator, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend. 

Ahimsa, and other elements of yoga practice, provides a counternarrative to these pressures.  The idea that I am okay—not just okay, even, but perfect--just the way I am, is radical in western thought.  How can I be perfect when I forgot to shave my legs, dirty dishes are in the sink, and there are 114 unanswered messages in my inbox?  Self-acceptance feels Stuart Smalley-ish:  “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”  This seems faintly ridiculous because our culture provides archetypes of perfect women, wives, mothers, etc., and it is clear that I most certainly am not “good enough.” Instead, yoga tells me that the external does not matter; that I am indeed a worthy human being, just like everyone else.

Running and yoga are good lessons in ahimsa, as my expectations are necessarily limited by my physical body.  My lungs, heart, and legs can only be taxed so far, so fast.  My hips and hamstrings will only stretch to a certain point.  Wise coaches and yoga teachers tell me to listen to my body.  This listening has become part of my running and yoga practice, and as a result, I have been able to push my own perceived boundaries in unexpected ways.

If I am to practice ahimsa, this acceptance of my physical boundaries will necessarily carry over to the rest of my life by recognizing and respecting my personal and professional boundaries as well.  I have a job in which, as one colleague said, there is no end.  I could work 24 hours a day, and there would still be emails to answer, proposals to write, papers to grade, classes to plan, ideas to consider, students to support, colleagues to share.  This is what drew me to this work in the first place:  it requires engagement of my mind and my heart.  I cannot imagine a better fit for my personality than this profession. 

In order to have the energy to do my life’s work, then, it seems I must try to understand and appreciate all that is mine to do, and all that is others’ to do.   One of the ways I violate ahimsa is that I try to fix things for people instead of letting them figure it out for themselves.  Deborah Adele suggests that being a fixer and worrier is a violation of ahimsa, because when we worry about others, we imply that they are not capable of, as one of my student teachers said, “taking their own ripe journey.”  When I consciously withdraw my worries and fears on behalf of others, I have more positive energy to give to the world.  

In this way, ahimsa is both personal and political.  It is personal, because it means living with integrity through recognizing and respecting my own boundaries.  It is also political in that it asks me to resist gendered and classed pressures that are implicit and explicit in this culture. However, ahimsa does not require that I withdraw from the world; just that I make deliberate, thoughtful, and compassionate choices.   It is both freeing and frightening to step outside the familiar zone governed by fear and judgment.  Like everything, this will be a nonlinear, recursive process, in which I get it right sometimes, and fail miserably at other times.  I may not have Stuart Smalley’s confidence, but at least I can get off my own personal Death Row.    

A Runner's Valentine

This year, I knew I would be at a conference for my class that was scheduled to meet from 4-6 p.m. on Valentine’s Day.  I asked a colleague to cover for me, and she said, “Sorry, I can’t.  My husband is a romantic and I know he will have made wonderful plans for us!” 

You would think that she was a newlywed in the first throes of early love.  But no, she has been married for many years and has a grandchild in high school.  I began thinking about the role of romance in my own marriage.  We will be married 18 years in June, and the romance, as traditionally constructed, has been gone for awhile now.  My birthday is within a few days of Valentine’s Day, and Nels has been known to ask, “Do I have to buy a Valentine’s Day card too?”  If he has to ask, there can be only one answer.  On a Valentine’s Day a long time ago, I shamed him into buying me flowers, and it was just all wrong.  Instead of being a gesture of love, it was a gesture of guilt based on my culturally constructed feeling that flowers=romance=love.

Ironically, I have received the most beautiful flower arrangements from him for my last few birthdays, even when he is out of town, as he was last week.  This is from a guy whose normal idea of a gift for me (and anyone else) is from the clearance rack at Marshall’s.  The bargain is part of the narrative of gift-buying for him. 

Over the years, my ideas about romance have changed.  I love the pure beauty and riotous scents that my birthday flowers bring to our late-winter, scratchy-heat home.  Not only are they an expression of Nels’ recognition and appreciation of what I enjoy, but they contain the early promise of spring.

 However, the real romance occurs not in a fancy restaurant or B&B, but on the East Bay Bike Path.  When we are running, we can talk about all the easy and hard things we are experiencing as individuals and together.  For some reason, hard truths are more palatable while running; maybe because we are not looking at each other, or because we are both engaged in physical effort, or because we are engaged in a shared experience even as we are talking about something potentially polarizing. 

In addition to these potentially difficult conversations, though, there is also the encouragement Nels provides for me as a runner.  He can compute numbers in his head (I love to test his actuarial skills by throwing out random equations about money or running times) and his newest calculation indicates that it is possible for me to run a BQ (Boston Qualifier) in my late 40’s.  “All you have to do is get down to 3:45!”  he enthuses.  I ran my last marathon in 4:26.  I have my doubts, but he does not.

For me, the ultimate in romance is someone who believes in me more than I do myself.  So, no, honey, you never, ever, have to buy me another Valentine’s Day card.  I love you. 

Still Running?

“Still running?” my mom asked me during a recent phone conversation.  My first reaction was the exasperated, “Of course.  Why wouldn’t I be?”  But then I realized that I haven’t been a runner all that long.  Four years almost exactly, in fact.   My mom has known me as a non-runner for a lot longer than she has known me as a runner. 

I did a little running during high school and college, mostly to keep my weight down.  At IU, I would jog at the HPER indoor track with my Walkman on, singing to Led Zeppelin and Van Halen loudly and off-key. After graduating, my workouts were intermittent.  I would get a gym membership for awhile and then let it lapse when I got bored with working out on machines.

When Nels and I moved into our first house, I started my almost-daily walks around the neighborhood.  Nels would join me sometimes, and we developed an hour-long route in which we managed to pass all the houses with outdoor cats and see how many we could pet.  There were regulars who trotted down their driveways as soon as they saw us.  Others regarded us with wary disdain. 

We established another walking route when we moved to Rhode Island in 2005 and made some new feline friends.  Because I kept a brisk pace for an hour 5-6 days a week, I considered myself reasonably fit.  My weight stayed stable for the most part, and I assumed that my lifelong lack of speed, agility, and flexibility meant that walking was all I would ever do.  It never, ever occurred to me to run. 

That changed after a visit back to Indiana for Christmas in late 2006.  We had a short layover in the Philadelphia airport and had to run from one terminal to another.  I remember trotting along the horizontal escalator, lugging my giant backpack, just to see the plane pulling away.  For the next hour, I coughed uncontrollably and couldn’t catch my breath.  We sat in white rocking chairs in the middle of the terminal as I hacked and wheezed, trying not to call too much attention to myself. 

“What’s wrong with me?”  I whispered hoarsely to Nels, between sips of water.

“You’re not in shape,” he said.

“WHAT?”  I thought.  Luckily for him, I couldn’t muster the breath to cuss him out.  “Of course I am in shape.  I walk almost every day!” I said to myself. 

Slowly, slowly, as he ate breakfast and I continued to gag, I realized he wasn’t insulting me.  He was telling the truth. 

So I started running, and he joined me.

We started to run sections of our former walking route, carefully rationing the running parts to be downhill or at least level.  At one point, Nels got injured, but I kept going, and decided to enter a 5K race in Colt State Park that summer.  I looked at training plans online and bought a real running watch.  Much to my dismay, when I timed my first mile at the local high school track, it was over 12 minutes.  For that entire spring, I alternated running days and walking days, finally running 3.5 miles in 40:30.  I wanted to make sure I could run at least that far before doing 3.1 miles in public.

The race was on a balmy June evening.  I was scared.  Would I come in last?  Would people make fun of how slow I was?  When I pulled in to the parking lot, it was reassuring to see kids and dogs, as well as runners of various shapes and sizes.  I had never realized that there would be other runners like me.  Real runners, especially those who entered races, were skinny people with ropy muscles, I had thought.

I finished the race in 33:58, faster than expected given my practice times.  I didn’t come in last, either.  My grin lasted for a week.       

I ran my last marathon at a faster pace than that first 5K, but nothing has surpassed it as far as joy and pride.  That’s when I became a runner, and I haven’t stopped since. Luckily for me, long distance running does not require speed, agility, flexibility, a skinny frame or ropy muscles. It simply requires health, perseverance, and listening to my body. 

For me, running is not a seasonal occupation, nor is a certain race on my bucket list.  Running is now part of my lifestyle, part of my identity, and part of my marriage.  So, yes, Mom, I am still running. 

Eggeman Road

My parents still live in the same house in Fort Wayne in which they raised me.  There is a familiarity to the house and the neighborhood, but everything else has changed. 

Cornfields, pastures, and narrow country roads have given way to homes surrounded by cement roads, strip malls, bigger schools, parks, trails, stoplights, and churches.  Peace Church, where I was confirmed and then married, used to be the only church in the area.  Now, including Peace, there is a Lutheran church, a giant Catholic church with attached school, and three different Baptist churches all within two miles of each other.  As I ran the path alongside the roads that I used to see outside the school bus window, I was struck by several things:  some homes looked just the same in my memory; distances seemed far shorter, and many changes were marked by prosperity, Midwestern style.  Big homes with three-car garages and lots of acreage. 

Eggeman Road connects Covington Road with Aboite Center. When I used to ride the school bus (always known as Bus 10), it was marked by beat-up looking farmhouses and pastures marked by sagging fences.  There was a girl who lived in a faded green house with dark green trim who always sat by herself.  We refused to sit by her because she smelled as if she didn’t bathe regularly and disappeared into the special education classes once we got to the school.  My feelings toward this girl were marked by disgust and fear.  I dreaded when the bus was crowded and that she might sit in my seat—as if her smell or disability would rub off on me.  As I think back on those times, it is her isolation, the turning her back on the rest of us and looking out the window, that stands out to me.  And shame that I could be so mean.

Ironically, I often isolated during this time in my life as well.  I enjoyed the bus ride to school, because I could often sit alone and look out the windows and dream.  Who lived in those big houses in Covington Lakes?  Did they have kids?  Horses?  Did they swim in the pond in the summer and skate on it in winter?  How about the large house off Covington Road owned by a famous Fort Wayne family?  Did they really have their own zoo?  I judged myself on the axis of those whom I thought had it better, like these folks, and those who had it worse, like the kids who lived on narrow, graveled Eggeman Road. 

Eggeman Road also provided moments of fear and hilarity.  One time, George, our bus driver, got stuck in the snow by the green farmhouse.  He couldn’t get us out at first so called for another bus.  After waiting for about 30 minutes, the other bus pulled up just as George rocked us out of the ditch. 

George was a retired farmer with a nimbus of white hair surrounding his bald head and old man’s potbelly.  He wore a gray bus driver’s uniform and was not afraid to stop the bus and walk menacingly down the aisle if he sensed some misbehavior going on.  I felt safe, cared for, and even a little afraid when he would threaten to throw a kid off the bus who was being mean to somebody else.  He also cleaned up the bus when somebody got sick.  On the way home one day, Jimmy Ayres threw up in the hump seat, or the seat fourth from the back that was directly over the wheel well.  I was sitting across from him, and it was evident that Jimmy had had corn for lunch.  George gently escorted Jimmy off the bus, cleaned him up, and brought out the ammonia solution with a distinct smell that I will forever associate with school restrooms and buses.  Jimmy was still crying with the shame of it and we teased him for weeks after that (hiding it from George, of course).  By mutual and unspoken consent, nobody sat in that seat for a long, long time, as it became known as the “throw up seat.” 

George’s major claim to fame is that every Halloween he bought a box of giant Hershey bars and gave each of us one.  It was a huge treat to swing off the bus, grab a bar, and say, “thanks, George.”  It feels disrespectful to me now that we, even in kindergarten, called this man by his first name. 

Somewhere around middle school, Bus 10 gave way to a bigger bus with a flat front and higher number that I could never remember.  The route changed, and eventually I escaped the indignity of riding the bus and got rides from my neighbor Lisa, who drove a tiny Honda and was partial to Phil Collins and James Taylor on the tape deck.

Eggeman Road is now paved, and the green farmhouse where that girl lived is gone.  As I ran by on the sidewalk that never existed before, I thought I saw the driveway going back into some gnarled brush, but am not sure.  Eggeman has become an upscale address with stately brick homes sitting far back from the road, protected by iron gates.  It is a different place.  I no longer am envious of the people who live in those kinds of homes, and my wonderings have changed:  what happened to the girl and her family? What is the significance of all these homes replacing fields and pastures?  Why does southwest Allen County repel me as I run by the churches, showy homes, and endless pavement?  Why does it attract me when I talk to the people who go to Peace and the Y? 

If I could change anything at all about who I was then (and who I am now), it would be to appreciate what I have and not wish for something that seems to be better.  Growing up in Bittersweet or Covington Lakes or Devil’s Hollow seemed romantic and exciting, but Covington Knolls provided nights sleeping in the backyard, neighborhood games of Kick of the Can, and playing in the cemetery across the street.  Who could ask for anything more?         

Hard People and Easy People

I’m not easy to live with

I know that it’s true

You’re no picnic either, baby

It’s one of the things I loved about you

                        From “All the Love in the World” by Don Henley

A few weeks ago, I heard someone say that her friend has “hard” kids, meaning that they were difficult to deal with on an emotional level.  That made sense to me:  some kids—and grownups—are high maintenance and some are low maintenance.

When I think about the easy and hard people in my life, I see them on a continuum.   Some are easy most of the time, and it is just certain contexts or situations that make them hard to deal with or be around.  Fewer are easy all the time.  And some are just plain hard. 

What makes a person hard?  Looking at my students, it is mostly about anxiety.  The ones who need constant attention and reassurance, and no matter how much I give, it is not enough.  They are perennially disappointed in me as their teacher, no matter how long the emails and nurturing the dialogue.  It has been a journey for me to figure out that it is their problem, not mine.  I will never fill the gap in their lives.

There’s also the unpredictability factor.  I have been in situations where I thought there was mutual understanding and respect, just to find out that no, the other person does not have the same view of the relationship.  A lot of this is about blindness based on a particular view of the self and of the world. 

Then there are those of us who project their fears onto others.  They interpret any dissonance as a personal slight.  Long ago, I had a colleague, whom I will call Amanda, who was hurt if she thought she was not invited to lunch.  I remained friends with her even when I moved a thousand miles away.  Amanda said she valued our friendship, but I always felt as if I was not living up to her expectations.  It was work to be her friend.   And when I told her I could not fly back to attend her daughter’s wedding, which was during the first weeks of school, she refused to talk to me afterward.  I did not live up to her idea of what friends do.  It was her projection, not any misdeed on my part.  It still feels bad, though.    

My principal used to say that all students brought baggage with them to our alternative school.  My colleagues and I brought our own baggage as well.  In secret, I named our school “the Island of Misfit Toys” because teachers and students were just a bit too weird to be in the mainstream.  It is disingenuous to think that we, as grownups, have left our baggage at some proverbial train station, and thus are easy, leaving our hard parts hidden in the dark recesses of our minds, or the privacy of our families and writing journals. 

Unfortunately, though, we take our baggage with us wherever we go, and it is visible to others who know how and where to look. While I did not have the language at the time, I knew Amanda was hard from the first weeks of working with her.  She felt her colleagues were conspiring against her, and her voicing of those perceptions made her anxiety and fears obvious to the rest of us.   

As for myself, I thought I hid things pretty well until I started taking yoga.   I was horrified to realize my baggage had a physical presence that was visible to my yoga instructors who gently and insistently instructed the class to drop our shoulders, soften our expressions, and unclench our jaws.  It felt like one of my dirty secrets was revealed.  Anybody who knew how to look could see the real me:  I sure ain’t easy. 

So what about you?  Where are you on the continuum of easy and hard?

Life's not Fair.

Life’s not fair.

The answer is:  It depends.

These phrases used to frustrate me, and now frustrate my candidates as they ready themselves for student teaching.  They want things to be smooth and clean.  Predictable.  The textbook/lesson plan/mentor/principal/internet has the magical answer. Given that belief, they feel confident in their ability to teach.  They feel ready to leave the nest and head into the wilds.  And yet, and yet.  They are about to be hit hard with the knowledge of how much work it takes to be a good teacher.  How you plan the best lesson ever, and it will bomb.  How some students will not buy what you are selling, and it has nothing to do with you.  How one reading strategy will not transfer from one text to another, one management tactic will not transfer from one class to another, how your relationships with individuals and classes evolve and devolve in seemingly random ways. 

My cooperating teacher, who became my friend, principal, and first mentor, said it simply: Life’s not fair.  There are many promises based on the same premise as the American Dream:  if you work hard, you will achieve your goals.  If you are fair, respectful, and know your stuff, students won’t smoke pot in the neighbor’s yard, or fight on a school trip, or come to school drunk.  Uh-huh.

But then you will have an oppositional student who later becomes an English teacher, she says, because of you.  Or you will have a candidate who did not get along with either of her cooperating teachers and who is now applying for National Board certification.  These balance the kids you had to kick out of school and the candidates you had to kick out of the program and blame you. 

I remember being shocked at the idea of nature being nondiscriminatory.  I somehow had the idea, perhaps because it was called “Mother Nature,” that nature was benevolent and kind, like some kind of divine goddess with flowers woven in her hair.  It’s taken me a long time to reconcile that nature is many opposite things—beautiful and ugly, calm and violent, loving and angry.  There are patterns, but these patterns are not regular and predictable, as was reiterated this year with its tornadoes, hurricanes, and snowstorms. 

Teaching is like that.  There are patterns, but they are not set in concrete.  No student is the same day after day; no lesson is the same from one year to the next; and no routine is eternally effective. 

While I am happy my candidates feel confident and ready in their pedagogical content knowledge, I also know that they are about to find out the secrets of teaching that keep some of us in the profession and drive others away.  Teaching is unpredictable, and the answer to most questions is…It depends.

Musings on Middle School Students

Middle school kids have a bad reputation.  Supposedly, they are ruled by their hormones, and in general, are a little crazy. 

Looking back at my own experience, that never made sense to me.  If I was ruled by my hormones, I sure didn’t know it.   This could have been because my mother explained sex by talking about eggs, at which point I was confused.  “Like a chicken?”  I asked.  The whole conversation was about fertilization, but I never quite got the connection to my body and a boy’s body until I heard the baseball metaphor.  You know the one:  first base is french, second base is feel…and I’ll stop there.  Listen to Meat Loaf if you need more information.   Boys definitely became more interesting, but looking back on it now, it wasn’t a physical thing, but more of an attention thing.  My first sloppy spin-the-bottle kiss at an eighth grade Halloween party did little to make this change. 

This week, as I observed teacher candidates teach in two different middle schools, I saw clear physical, attitudinal, and cognitive differences from 6^th-8^th grade, and even in the same classroom.   Some of the girls looked like they should be in high school, including the 8^th grader who sat down with a heavy sigh and said to her teacher, who was sitting next to me, “I’m ovulating.”  The boys sitting in her group didn’t blink an eye—not a blush or an eye roll.  Did they understand?  Had their fathers given them the same talk my mother gave to me, so they had no idea what that even meant? 

In contrast, I watched a 7^th grade girl in another class use a broken piece of plastic to search around in one nostril, observe what she found, and then stick it in her mouth. 

I worry about the girls.  Some of them are miles ahead in maturity, height and weight.  Being in middle school must feel like poor fitting jeans, when you move from “juniors” to “misses” and realize that your body has outgrown who you have been for so long.  Middle school, with its necessary structures and explicit rules meant to nurture and support children as they move from childhood to adolescence, must feel restrictive and a bad fit.

But boys can also be mature.  At an urban school, I saw that some of the boys had the name “Jose” etched into their haircuts.  I just assumed there were a lot of Joses in the class.  But when I discovered one of the boys’ names was Francisco, I realized that these kids were paying homage to their friend and classmate who had been killed by a gunman who had come to his front door looking for his brothers.  When Jose opened up the door, he was shot multiple times.  His friends paid tribute to him the only way they knew how.  It was beautiful, and it was heartbreaking.  Death is not unusual to these kids.

The most poignant moment came after class, when three of the boys came over to me and shook my hand.  I have observed teacher candidates for over six years now, and this has never happened.  I was touched by these students’ dignity and adult manners.  These were children, and they took the time to come over and talk to me, even as they were in the midst of being at school and grieving for their friend.  As my mother would say, bless their hearts.