Today, is Sunday, May 15. In 8 days I will begin my 8th decade on this earth.
Because May 23 is a work day, my wife will take me out to dinner the night before. She has not told me where, but I leave that to her discretion.
It is possible that my students, who know when I turn 70, will do something for me, although I am not counting on it.
As is my wont as I approach anniversaries of one sort or another, especially those divisible by ten, I begin to reflect — where I find myself, how I go forward.
This year is perhaps complicated because I know I am not returning to my current school, which is actually 5th in which I have taught over the past 4 years. Long story, one I can explain, but which makes it difficult to even get interviews, although I am teaching a sample lesson and scheduled for what would be the penultimate interview immediately afterward between 10:30-12:45 tomorrow.
So this piece is a bit of thinking aloud. Some of what I will share is unique to me. Some may be relevant to others, perhaps even to you.
I invite you to keep reading.
As those who read me regularly know, I tried retiring from the classroom at the end of the 2011-2012 school year. I had tried for several fellowships/graduate school programs that would not have cost me anything and might have put me on a different path, but without success. So when I retired I had no idea what I would do next. I did some consulting, and was preparing to come on board a political campaign when I accepted a request from my first principal to fill in a vacancy, a position I left when I had to help my wife address her cancer. By the Spring, when it was clear that she was responding well to treatment, I began to explore options again, both within and without the classroom. There was a real possibility for a political position in government, but my heart drew me back to the classroom, which is what I have been doing since.
I am still an effective teacher of adolescents, but I am not sure it is what I should do with whatever time I have left.
I still explore possibilities, but I begin to think about what matters.
I would like to be able to reflect more.
I’d like to read.
There are people who have sent me books they want me to read and then write about them, but I have fallen behind.
If health and finances would allow, my wife would like to travel more.
My mother died at 47. My father lived until his mid 80s. His older brother lived into his 90s, his other siblings (several of whom are still alive) well into their 80s. My mother’s two siblings lived until late 80s or early 90s.
Thus I probably have a life expectancy of something around 15 years or more.
My energy level, while still better than many at least a decade younger than me, is far less than it was even when I retired. I really enjoy when I can take a nap of at least 30-45 minutes in the afternoon. I do often have a free period, but sleeping at one’s desk is not really all that comfortable.
Our finances took more than a bit of a hit as a result of my wife’s illness, so I know at least for the present I will need an income of some kind, and nowadays classroom teaching or something related provides the greatest income.
But it is not impossible that we could rearrange our lifestyle , make significant changes in how we spend money, and perhaps be able for both of us adjust to think about the things we both still want to do.
As I was driving to school recently I had on a 60s station and heard “Satisfaction.” I remembered that it came out in 1965 — more than a half century in the past. If I turn to a 50s station I could be listening to music I first heard 60 years ago.
I have some books I have owned for more than 6 decades. I get a sense of how much things have changed to see what the prices for a paperback book were then as compared to what I now have to pay in say Barnes & Noble.
At the end of my senior year of high school and for part of the summer I was working at a McDonald’s, and as I remember a hamburger was around a quarter.
When I was born, Truman was President, but had not yet been reelected.
Since then I have lived through the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, GHWBush, Clinton, GWBush, and now Obama. Whoever takes office on January 20 will be, assuming I am still alive, my 14th President. And yes, I remember Truman a bit — in kindergarten we saw a drawing of Abraham Lincoln being guarded by troops and our teacher told us that President Truman also had guards, but they now wore suits and were called Secret Service. Politics has for much of my life been a major part of it, as has government service: between time in the military, teaching, working for local government, and a 6 month stint as a contractor to the Federal government, I have spent more than 3 decades serving the public. I still care about government and public service.
I wonder what really matters.
I wonder what my continuing responsibility to others is, beyond giving a honest day’s work for whatever wages I receive.
I look back and can say that I have done some good in my life, but I can also acknowledge when I did not live up to my own expectations for myself, including this past school year, both within and without my classroom. I take some solace in recognizing that we are neither as magnificent as might be assumed from whatever the best we have done is, nor should we be totally judged with contempt and rejection from our worst failure or even our worst deliberate harm of others, that is, if we acknowledge and accept our responsibility and attempt to make recompense in some way.
In the past few years especially, I have found myself both looking back and wondering about what the future may hold, including wondering how much longer I may have.
My wife will tell you that I am very insecure about what I have done, that I am constantly judging myself and more often than note finding myself wanting in some fashion. That such an attitude can serve as a motivator to do more and better I do not deny. But it can also make me unable to fully accept thanks, gratitude, or praise properly. Regardless of what my future may hold, I want that to stop.
Looking back, I can see many paths that I chose not to take — I turned down a Peace Corps appointment for the Philippines because I had just started a job and signed a lease. I can think of jobs I was offered that I chose not to take, including picking one school setting over another. Some of the other employment opportunities passed by included paid political work, something that could have led to a very different career.
I also, even after I knew the woman who would become my wife, seriously explored becoming a monk - first in an Episcopalian Benedictine monastery in the Midwest, and then in an Orthodox Christian monastery on Mount Athos in Northern Greece.
Following any of those other paths would have led to a very different life. For all the difficulties I may have encountered, I would not wish to change, because to start with any of those choices many years ago would probably have meant I would not have had the many years together with Leaves on the Current. I would not have had my life blessed with the many four footed members of our family, those who have passed on, and the two felines still with us.
I cannot say with the Paul Anka song popularized by Frank Sinatra that the mistakes I made were too few to mention. I certainly cannot assert that all I have done I did it my way.
I have known since childhood that I was in some ways very different, that I did not really quite fit, even when I could perform very well — both within school and elsewhere. Part of it was and remains my shyness, something that is often misinterpreted when people meet me, and is not necessarily evident from the words I write..
Part of why I find myself drawn to teaching — and mentoring when not a formal teacher — is because I can think of nothing more important than helping others to believe in themselves, to develop capacities and skills they might not have realized they had, to believe in themselves, in what they can do, to try to be who they can be.
As I look back, I am learning to accept where I have failed, to be able as well (sometimes with greater difficulty) where I have done some good.
My wife would like me to have more time to really listen to music. I try to find time for that, not just with earbuds when I am writing or the radio when I am driving. I do not currently have any way of playing the more than 1,800 LPs the two of us still have. I can listen to the perhaps 2,000 CDs we have on my computer, or on a portable CD player, or in my car. Perhaps that will become a priority for me. Were I to take every CD, tape, and LP we have (avoiding those duplicated in multiple media), I could listen 6 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it would still take me several years just to get through them once.
From Psalm 90, Verse 10, as it appears in the Tanakh, Jewish Publication Society edition:
The days of our years are threescore years and ten, Or even by reason of strength fourscore years; Yet is their pride but travail and vanity; For it is speedily gone, and we fly away.
I will soon reach that threescore years and ten. I am likely to reach the fourscore years. I do not view my life as it continues as a struggle, a travail. Certainly others may think my reflecting upon as a vanity.
I reflect because I want my life to be purposeful.
I want my life to in some way give back more than I have received.
I have been blessed by so much.
I think of the 2nd half of Luke 12:48 (NAS Bible translation):
From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.
I know I still have more to give.
I may not yet know how.
I know that if I do not nurture myself, I will not have the strength nor the depth to be there for others.
As it happens, what comes up next on the I-Pod function of my phone is the Dona Nobis Pacem from Bach’s B Minor Mass, a recording given to me by my wife.
Give us peace.
Appropriate for this meditation, do you not agree?
I stop to listen intently, going back to the beginning.
It always both uplifts me and makes me tear up, tears of joy.
So let me end this ramble by sharing that performance with you: