The other night, I asked my students: If you are dedicated to righting a “wrong” in our world — say addressing your most urgent environmental issue, with inspired and assiduous effort — yet your efforts bring no change to the world, would you continue to engage, or give up? There was a long pause, and finally, soft-spoken Isaac from the very back of the room said, “It’s a lot like Sisyphus.” Quietly awed, I asked him exactly what he meant. He said, “It is simply a matter of who you want to be … it is part of who you are, so you do it.” Isaac responded matter-of-factly, without any pretensions or pride; his answer was refreshing to hear, and so dramatically different from our culture, where we care too little about the process of being, and too much about the results. A kind of existential ends justify the means. Isaac’s comment has stayed with me, slowly steeping.
Isaac inspired two related lines of thought. One, he nailed French Philosopher Albert Camus’ key point, referencing “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” (a favorite of mine and never far from my classes), positing that “happy” means living a life of purpose. Secondly, he inadvertently made the best case for investing in education, creating opportunities for youth to explore the age-old question: what gives our lives meaning?
Our culture, with its rapacious appetite for results and the metrics of measurement, misses the most generous of earthly gifts: the intrinsic wonder of living in the present, and the accompanying rituals that are the sole crucibles for love, learning and connection. Being alive and present for each and every moment is the gift that we all yearn for, the gift that fills our hearts and souls with true sustenance. Camus’ ultimate point is that life’s meaning only comes from the conscious act of living and struggling — life takes place in the process, not just the result. We push our respective rocks up hills to know ourselves. It is our soul’s high adventure. Isaac knows this. His comment was a sure-footed response from a student who, with his family, had left the fear and uncertainties of his country only to face the brutal realities of making a life in our nation.
America’s appalling record on education, health and poverty reflects our unwillingness to invest adequately in the process of our children’s education. While America ranks first for the number of millionaires and billionaires, Gross Domestic Product and military spending, we do not lead industrialized nations for money spent on public education. And it is not surprising that our academic results disappoint. It is hard to conceive of a nation more dedicated to commodifying our humanity. When humans are defined purely by economic terms, we hollow out the spiritual, moral and emotional dimensions that make life truly meaningful. Perhaps no other culture so myopically seeks the quick fix. “Winning” is truly all that matters, and in order to win, anything goes, and that is the death knell of true education, and ultimately, our nation’s future.
I began teaching when I was 23. Facing 180 junior high students each day, in six atomic, energetic bundles we called classes, was my first exposure to what we righteously referred to as “education.” On my first day as a teacher, I was told not to smile until February, and “don’t give the little shits an inch.” It was a profoundly painful first semester. Flying back from Christmas to face my students, I steeled my resolve and mused, “Well, if the plane crashes, at least I won’t have to teach on Monday.” In my eyes, Sisyphus had it easy! I had 180 rocks, but I did have summer off … The year was rife with insights, summed up by the school superintendent telling me, “Our country is more interested in money than children, so please hold tight to your idealism.”
I have held tight. In part because I fully believe Nelson Mandela’s observation, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” Our children are wise and funny and true-hearted. They are wicked smart, idealistic, show up and “hang in there,” despite our flagrant neglect, or, at best, our casual support for their future. They are eager to be moved, not molded, and hungry to be held aloft by a sated soul and an engaged mind. They know the power of self-purity, dignity, and justice, and seek the “creative tension” in issues of environmental and social justice; they haven’t lost their idealism, yet they are far from naive. They sense the generous power and sheer magnificence of life. Despite a culture that reduces human endeavors to winning or losing, our children understand the powerful grist of a soul tied to a higher purpose, and dare to seek it.
Kate Taylor, a student last year, wrote, “When education prioritizes conformity and outcomes over curiosity and conscience, innocence is lost, and justice collapses. To remain morally viable, education must restore legitimate power, protect freedom and equality, and commit to forming creative, intelligent individuals, rather than underprepared copies of one another.”
Isaac’s quietly profound comment reminds us that being human means seeking to understand who we are, and struggling to conjure up the courage each day to navigate life with our values intact. However Sisyphean it might appear, that is where happiness lives.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
— Shakespeare