An Important and Grave Matter: Confessions of a Human Being

I have an important and grave matter to share with you today because I can no longer deny the truth. The rumors are running rampant. It isn't easy to hide what's so obviously obvious anymore. And while I know this may be hard for some of you to accept because you're not ready to handle the truth, I'm confident that once you hear me out, you'll agree that even though facts are hard, they are facts. Are you ready? Here goes.

Confession: I am a human being.

I've always known I was a human being, even at an early age. I knew I was different as soon as I started reading off of Dixie Riddle Cups when I was four, and freaked people in the Foodtown grocery store line out when I was five by turning to my mom to ask why I Dream of Jeannie was divorcing her husband (read off the National Enquirer). While the other kids were perfect, not reading the National Enquirer headlines out loud in the grocery line and instead pretending to be pirates and pilots with personalized ships and planes, I was being human.

I went to school and made mistakes. One time, I got a 38 on a math test. A 38! Can you imagine? I laughed too loud and too often and put my brother in jail with air prison bars when he laughed at me instead of with me. I rode my bike to the forbidden 7-11 to get candy after school, and grumbled about having to set the table. Sometimes, I even grumbled about having to clear the table.

Now and then, when desperate or slightly afraid, not perfectly courageous, I even lied. To a friend, to my mother, to myself. I told myself I could be perfect. If I acted perfect, looked perfect, sounded perfect, eventually I would become perfect. No one would know I didn't always clean the house or cook food from scratch or take the garbage out on time. Being a human being was so hard. It seemed like the perfect people, you know who I mean, the ones in charge, the ones who judge us human beings, they seemed to have it down. And try as I might, I just couldn't be perfect.

I couldn't be the perfect student nor the perfect friend. I couldn't be the perfect daughter or the perfect girlfriend. Perfect Kristie simply didn't exist, especially at work where it seemed like all the rules favored the perfect. They even had a perfect rubric and a perfect pamphlet produced by the perfect Department of Education of the most perfect state. Normative perfect 24/7.

I don't know about you but whenever I've tried to be perfect for a 24/7 stint, or maybe even just for one class, things tend to go awry. I just can't suppress, repress, digress the human being in me. It's been there since the beginning and it will be there in the end.

In fifth grade I had this red short sleeved T-shirt with a picture of a string bean on it and the caption read, "I'm a human bean." As an experiment we should all, young, old, single, coupled, working, retired, get one to wear 24/7. And when someone asks about it, don't just confess, proclaim.

Just Say Yes

Snow day! Wake up and shout "Yes!" to a gift day of possibilities, a chance to catch up on all dreams deferred, those small and large, shallow and deep.  That book I couldn't finish? Yes, I can.  That blog I've been meaning to write? Yes, I can. That nap I long for all week? Yes, I will. That sink I've been meaning to clean? Yes, I can. (But I probably won't.)

I'm sick and tired of the every day "No." No,  don't eat that. No, we could never do that. No, no one makes a living doing that.  No, you shouldn't watch Signs, again. You've already seen it at least six times.

In improvisation classes there is only one rule, say yes. I think we should all live by it. Without yes, fear thrives. Without yes, innovation dies. Without yes, society stagnates. Yes is so much more fun.

Yes didn't stop me from leaping at the chance to teach in England for a year. Yes didn't stop me from going on safari in Kenya. Yes didn't stop me from flying solo to New Zealand. Those experiences are embedded in my world view and undoubtedly make me a better person for having had them.

Is saying yes always easy? Not necessarily. No is the easiest word in the world to say. No requires no forethought, no contemplation, no bravery. Yes takes real courage, real conviction. No is the coward's way out of complexity, of challenge, of life.

At the end when I take my own accounting, how sad it would be to continue to declare final, definitive "nos." I hope to be uttering "Yes, I pursued my passion. Yes, I did it all, Yes, I have no regrets. And most of all Yes, I loved and was loved."

My Ever Changing List of Biases

I'm very into making lists of late.

Subject to Change Biases

On human nature:

1. Teenagers lie. Little kids lie. Grownups lie. All lies feed on desperation and fear.
2. Fear is a terrible motivator. So are grades.
3. Punitive measures lead to stagnation. Risk taking requires an acceptance and embrace of failure, not a public shaming. Innovation only results when repeated failure is allowed as a path from which to learn and improve.
4. Procrastination sucks your life away, minute by minute.
5. Pets restore our souls by making us focus on compassion and caring for another.
6. Our priorities as a nation are clearly warped when we financially reward celebrities and athletes with vast, enormous sums of money but can't increase the minimum wage to keep up with decades of inflation.
7. Sport stadiums should be paid for by the people who use them, [not the government at any level]; community centers, parks, bike trails, libraries, and swimming pools should be paid for by everyone. (I stole this from Doug Johnson.)
8. It's never really about you.
9. Cell phones are evil and will lead to our downfall. It's already started, BTW.

About education:

1. A teacher's job is to educate the whole person, regardless of subject area. Our primary goal in providing education is to make better human beings, not to raise test scores.
2. To that end, our nation and our educational systems are suffering from dire lacks of loyalty, respect, and compassion, at all levels.
3. The best and brightest are never going to go into or stay in education so long as teachers do not have professional autonomy and are themselves, treated like students requiring intensive supervision who must always ask for permission.
4. Creativity, empathy, and humor are as important to success as reading, writing and numeracy.
5. All citizens should pay for public education through taxes. All schools should be funded equally. I do not want to live in a nation of idiots. Look at what's happened to Congress.
6. All kids should be treated the way we ourselves would want to be treated. If you wouldn't subject your own child to "it", no one else's should be.
7. On data, evidence and statistics: math never lies, except when it does, through omission or manipulation. As Einstein once said, "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
8. Standardized test are more about discrediting public schools and teachers in service of making huge privatized corporate profit than improving education.

 
 

#Nerdlution Day 2: Conceptual Happiness

I'm going to exchange today's scheduled exercise for composing another blog post because it makes me happier. Go Nerdlution.

Yesterday's list of things that make me happy was a combination of both things and experiences. For today's list, Part 2, we're going to go a bit more conceptual.

Slightly More Conceptual Things That Make Me Happy, in no particular order

1. Autonomy.  Independence, determining one's path, making decisions based on the sum total of your years of knowledge and professional expertise. I own my own home, my own car, I am responsible on a daily basis for many young adult lives. I make decisions for myself, my own well-being, my own future and the future of my four cats. What gets in the way of my autonomy will be discarded and circumvented. Asking permission does not a happy state make.
2. Choice. It's all about deciding for myself, not because convention dictates so. I select, I pick over, I sort through, I weigh the pros and cons, I am the decider. No one else.
3. Creativity. As soon as you ignore whatever is at the heart of expressing one's own creativity, or let it lay dormant, or suppress it, happiness diminishes in droves.
4. Loyalty. To principles, to relationships. Administrators throughout the country play leap frog from district to district, questing for their own superintendencies. And even then they jump once again. Many school district employees no longer feel their employer's loyalty. At the heart of our educational reform woes is a lack of loyalty to one another, to best practices in spite of standardized testing, to the best interest of the student as a person. We'd all be happier with a lot more expression of loyalty.
5. Prosperity. Having enough, food, shelter, transportation, to feed the cats, to buy medicine, to buy books, to go to movies, to travel. Gratitude holds the hand of prosperity.
6. Intelligence. Knowing stuff makes me happy. Being with other people who know stuff, no matter their age, bliss.
7. Language. Without language we would be utterly lost. Language development is a marvel. Think of your brain deciphering and constructing language, the fact that we can talk to one another, think to ourselves, refer to the past, present, and future, express the imagined and the real, learn other languages, create our own languages, hear it, see it, express it metaphorically, what can language not do?
8. Music. The language of emotion, mainlined. There you go.
9. Freedom. This or that. There or here. Take out or home cooked. Dog or cat. How 'bout both? Single or married. Live alone or in a commune. Good or evil. Some or all or none. FB or Twitter. Lady Gag or Madonna. Fat free or full of fat. Marvel or DC. Yankees or Mets. Physics or chemistry. Flute or saxophone. Stewart or Colbert. Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellan. The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns. Gandalf or Galadriel. Well, you see where this is going.
10. Love

#Nerdlution

I'm part of a movement. It began on Twitter, today. A few of us readerly types, those who hang out at nerdybookclub, have merged the oft ill-fated New Year's resolution with our nerdy book club selves. The result? #nerdlution.

 The rules for the #nerdlution are as follows (copied from Chris Lehmann):

Starting tomorrow, Monday, December 2...pick one thing or many things you want to commit to doing over the next 50 days. We were thinking it’s something you do every day, but really it’s up to you.  The focus here is making a change that matters...There is only community, support, and love for making and doing good things.

A Very, Very Important #Nerdlution FAQ

• Can I just pick one thing? A: If it makes you happy.
• Can I pick 5 things? A: If it makes you happy.
• Is it okay if it is not fitness related? A: If it makes you happy.
• Is it okay if it is reading related? A: If it makes you happy.
• Is it okay if I’m really, really scared but really, really inspired? A: If it makes you happy.
• Is it okay to only do something 3 times per week and something else 2 times per week? A: If it makes you happy.
• If I mess up and miss a day, can I make it up another day? A: If it makes you happy.
• If I mess up, can I just skip that day? A: If it makes you happy.
• Should I tell everyone if I’m having a hard time? A: If it makes you happy.
• Should I celebrate little accomplishments? A: If it makes you happy.
• Can I modify my goal if I need to? A: If it makes you happy.
• Should I give up if it doesn’t go well? A: No.
• Should I feel alone in this or like people are judging me? A: No. (Because we’re all gonna screw up a little or a lot, let’s be honest.)

Me again. Why join? Let's face it. We all need to be happier. We all want to be happier. What I love about this movement is its focus on what actually makes you happy. Think about it. I mean, really think about it. When is the last time you truly examined what makes you happy and matched your thoughts to actions of fulfillment? When is the last time someone asked you what truly makes you happy and not just listened, but heard you and supported you in your efforts? Can you be honest (and brave) enough with yourself (and them) to tell the truth?

Let's find out.

Things that Make Me Happy, in no particular order, and for varying durations (Part I)

1. Kittens and Cats--observing them, being near them, petting them, playing with them and having them sleep on me
2. Puppies and Dogs--see above only add being greeted with utter joy
3. Chocolate, preferably milk (see previous blog post)
4. Writing, and I mean actual writing including revising and editing. I'm not one of those writers who dreads writing and subsequently expels a huge sigh of relief when finished. No, no. I live for the composition process itself, rife with problems to solve, words to find and rearrange, paragraphs to move about. I really like that part. I really like mastering that part. Have I mentioned how much I like messing around with that part?
5. Gardening
6. Making a great joke, stellar one liner or wry observation
7. Reading an amazing book like The Kite Runner or Wonder
8. The ocean, lakes, rivers, brooks, ponds in close proximity
9. Watching or performing in musicals although I think I might have been happier if just once, instead of the understudy for the lead, I had actually been the lead
10. Napping on my mother's couch, which is the most amazing and perfect nap couch ever known to humankind. Its exquisiteness exceeds the words available for describing it. It has never failed to lull me to sleep, a feat fraught with failure in my own bed and on my own couch and even on a 21 hour flight to New Zealand after taking Ambien. If I could pay an airline to install my mother's couch as my personal first class sofa, I would fly again. And again. And again.

And you?