Wisdom for a Desert Island

My sister-in-law likes to play the Desert Island game.  We are given a category, such as fruit, and asked to give the top five that we would want if we were stranded on a Desert Island.  The Island motif serves as a metaphor for the things you couldn’t live without if you had to choose.  Notwithstanding that many folks actually live on real versions of a Desert Island, with their choices conscripted by their social, psychological, economic, and/or cultural circumstances, it’s worth thinking about what really matters in a world where Dennis Rodman in North Korea makes the front page, and I have to read about the war in Afghanistan in Doonesbury. 

I never could answer those Desert Island questions because there are too many contextualizing factors.  Take the fruit example.  I would probably pick clementines, but after that, the choice is less clear.  If I picked apples, would they be the hard, juicy kind that bite you back?  I eat blueberries in my oatmeal every day in summer, but what if I don’t have oatmeal on the island?  And of course I love avocados, but they have a lot of fat.  And are they even a fruit? 

So you see my dilemma.  Give me any Desert Island category, and I will not be able to come up with a definitive list because of the range of variables.  For example, with movies, I know I would get sick of watching the same five over and over, so would I choose something that requires multiple watchings to understand, as opposed to say, The Big Lebowski, which makes me laugh and cringe at the same time? 

Books are the same way.  I’d have to weigh fiction and nonfiction, philosophy and poetry, young adult, popular fiction, literary fiction, books of theories and essays. Books on yoga, books on meditation, books on compassion, books on spirituality.  Books on social justice, books on schooling, books on social justice in schools.   Books on writing, books on teaching, books on teaching writing.  It is impossible to choose. 

And yet.  I do believe that I just read a book that covers almost all of the above.  This book, only 50 pages long, provides a framework for many of the issues I have been contemplating for the last 20 years or so. 

Here’s a quote:

Spiritual people, by and large, try to behave well, a habit I am not attempting to subvert.  Still, living by some idea about how things should be is not entirely preferable to living as you are.  For one thing, the goodness of others can have a shaming side, especially if the virtue has shallow roots.  People who do not or cannot, yet, behave very well may feel humiliated by spiritual language and behavior.  They may feel they aren’t good enough to sit at this table.  Or they may suspect, with reason, the quality of the food. (O’ Reilley, pp. 18-19).    

I have suspected the quality of food at many a spiritual table, even my own cooking.  I wrote rather lightheartedly last week about the obstacles of Ganesha, joking about yoga poses that elude me and traffic on 195.  The next morning, I found out that the 15 year old son of a friend had died in a tragic accident.  I also connected back to my friend’s father in the hospital, and another friend’s partner dying in the VA Hospital.  Screw Ganesha, I thought.    

And then, I remembered that I don’t actually believe that an elephant god puts obstacles in my path to teach me lessons about humility, patience, or anything else.  It is up to me to see the thing and behave in an authentic, thoughtful way, recognizing that my negative reactions are patterns, not character flaws.

O’Reilley acknowledges the injustices of the world and how it comes into our classrooms, whether we like it or not.  She writes,

Life comes to dark places, and people sit with stories that are truly hellacious….What does this have to do with teaching school, you may wonder.  Well, I think that if we can’t pull the weight of these stories off people, it’s very hard for them to learn.

Yes.  This is the real world of teaching, and yet there’s not a damn thing about it in the Common Core or in any educational policy that I have ever seen. 

I remember when, a few years after I graduated, I was marveling to my advisor that I couldn’t understand her feedback on my dissertation, and now it was crystal clear.  She said, “Janet, you couldn’t hear me then.” 

Sometimes students can’t hear us, maybe because of the stories they are carrying around.  But the wise teacher can at least make time to hear her/his students.  That’s our job, even if it isn’t in in our job descriptions or evaluations.

So my Desert Island list is pretty definitive after all: clementines, The Big Lebowski, and a tiny book called Radical Presence: Teaching as Contemplative Practice by Mary Rose O’Reilley.