Take Out the Stories They've Put into Your Mind

“To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love." - Stephen Batchelor, Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist

Throughout the past month, covid numbers climbed again. Many I know began to retreat back into their cocoons. Fear set in. Again. Newspaper headlines reported the descent into another chaotic public health crisis coupled with a political crisis of a growing resistance movement by the many who refuse to accept that covid represents any sort of threat to their lives or those of their loved ones. 

As an uplifting backdrop to the daily fresh hell of American politics, I have been reading a book about grief and acceptance of loss. Despite not actively grieving anyone at the moment, I found the book particularly moving and an important glimpse into how Americans view death. The read fresh in my mind when my partner recently proclaimed that, "covid has stolen nearly two years of our lives at this point!" it unlocked the missing piece for me in all of this. The resistance and the covid-cautious are both grieving in some way, albeit very differently. Everyone has lost someone or something out of this pandemic. No one wanted this, clearly. But now that it is here, the only way out is through. Certain people have settled on through is to risk getting covid and hope that their own immune defenses will be enough. Yet, from a utilitarian standpoint, the best way through for the highest percentage of people (young to old, healthy to unwell, poor to rich) would be to increase the number of preventative measures like vaccinating, distancing, increasing overall health, etc. 

Americans will go to great lengths to avoid any sort of discomfort - mentally, emotionally, and physically. These measures against discomfort take many forms including believing in conspiracy theories, alternative timelines, and accepting millenarianism. The pandemic has gone through many stages at this point, and in its current evolution, there's still not a hint of acceptance coming through on any political front. For the more cautious, unending vigilance against viruses has literally put lives on hold in major ways, threatening to damage the socioemotional and intellectual development of everyone involved. On the other side, an assertion of individual freedoms over anything that impedes their lives in any way, big or small, has put countless innocents at risk of dying unnecessarily of covid. Both of these perspectives are just that -interpretations of reality.  Yet, "reality" aligns with the universe's moral stance, which is to say, there is not one. 

Speaking of discomfort, this semester I took Economics of Education, a course that I powered through to learn the secrets of another perspective on the world. I will never be an economist. It's a degree of empiricism that is akin to religious fanaticism in my mind. If answers are in the numbers, wouldn't we have been able to figure out how to solve the problem of unequal outcomes in school achievement by now? Maybe there are truly too many variables to study this definitively. As much as I felt like an outsider in the course and at times experienced imposter syndrome, I am glad I continued in the course. The class provided valuable information about how others who contribute to the field of education view the institutions and people within it. As the only active educator, I was a minority voice within the discussions at times because my experience had led me to different conclusions and desirous of different solutions than those being presented. Talking face to face with others made it possible to come to an understanding of where we could come together and what would require compromise to accomplish. The current political milieu, entrenched in faceless online interactions does not allow for such a vent. 

As someone whose entire occupation relies on in-person interactions, I spend a lot of time thinking about how our culture is evolving due to the prevalence of online interactions. About a month ago, I was sitting in the back of a public high school auditorium last period with my worst class academically. As they shifted in their seats, uncomfortable and done with the week, a guest speaker tried to engage them in meditation and mindfulness. Admittedly, my own mindfulness during this series of workshops had been absolutely abysmal - writing a paper, grading, checking email, et al. But I decided to model good behavior by at least trying to "turn on, tune in, drop out," too. Why should they be the only ones to sit uncomfortably until the last bell rang?

I began by watchfully observing my students; a movie blasted through the partitioned wall in a drama class. The dialogue caught my attention as something I had seen before -  A Vietnam-era movie? Full Metal Jacket? Maybe. But then, after waking a kid up, the "Flight of the Valkyries" kicked in, and I knew it - Apocalypse Now! Oh, I thought, this is an interesting juxtaposition. Choppers flying overhead, machinegun fire, and a will to be fully present; it took strength to not laugh out loud at that moment. The presenter seemed not to notice, neither did the kids.  Despite their collective disinterest in the program, some of the students were paying close attention and all of them at least had a break from the norm of the hyper-scheduled school day. 

This tableau so concisely symbolizes the experience of working in a public school - the dysfunction is real, and yet largely, the kids are alright. For those concerned about the wellness of students after two years of interruptions, the truth is, there are issues academically, behaviorally, and emotionally. Parents and politicos should realize that those problems may have been exacerbated by school being interrupted, but they were already manifesting long before that. Problems may be coming to a head because there's a support staff at school to adequately deal with it. Many students, like many adults, want to return to whatever their normal was before. Constantly harping on the learning losses and emotional depravity of covid-learning plants thoughts in students' minds that there IS something wrong. 

Anxiety often proves to be unproductive. Rather, present students with tools and coping mechanisms, meet students where they are academically and model good behavior. Education institutions have been providing these services for generations. We have to trust that with the right support, public institutions can survive the most difficult times as those in which we live. For those who find it more appropriate to tear down public faith in these institutions, the question becomes just how cynical are you about the state of society? Public schools persisted through prior pandemics, world wars, doomsday countdowns, natural disasters, and perpetual budget cuts. The difference now is that maintaining the health of schools and similar organizations relies on everyone pitching in. In an era of every man for himself, that's a hard sell. The scarcity mindset is not objective reality - it's another lens that's employed to control people through fear. 

Basic human interactions are often awkward and uncomfortable, they require give and take. We're all grieving for the loss of our normal lives, but we're so focused on the loss, we're also forgetting we're still living despite all of that grieving. The best way forward is through, no matter how uncomfortable.