You Open The Window, And You Wait For The Breeze

at the camp where i'm a counselor, the red flag is reserved for incoming campers who will, for some reason or another, require more attention or even potentially create problems for people around them. the reasons for a red flag can vary, from behavioral problems, to a past history of violence or giving counselors trouble, to even physical or emotional syndromes. it's not unusual for bunks at camp, which have 12 campers each, to have 1 or 2 kids with red flags.

so that's why, when our 2 week session started this past sunday, we were a bit concerned when 8 of our 11 campers were labeled as red flags. this bunk was actually so potentially problematic that they switched me into a different unit in camp so that i and another veteran counselor could be with the bunk. when i heard, i was excited, because i felt like it was a huge honor. and also, of course, a huge challenge.

here are some of the bunk stats: two of our kids have aspberger's, a form of autism. about 4 or 5 have add or adhd. one is in therapy for anxiety. another has minor physical cerebral palsy. one is in therapy for anger management, and was just kicked out of school and is currently living with his aunt, who forced him to come to camp. oh yeah, and he's one of two black kids in a pretty much all white, all jewish camp. another kids is catholic. and two of the kids, upon arriving, kept asking if they could be switched from our bunk, or alternately, things you could do to get kicked out of camp and sent home.

fast forward now to tuesday. day two of the session. camp, where so much happens in one day, makes two days feel like you've been here a very long time. the first couple days were a definite struggle. i was in a state of constant awareness, making sure the kids with aspberger's weren't wandering off, making sure there were no fights, both emotional and physical. trying to steer some of the kids away from their general mode of being hurtful and disrespectful.

so our first block of the day was rockhopping along the river. very physically challenging. i forgot to mention that one of the kids with aspbergers, eric, is 12 years old and clocks in at 6 foot four, 250 pounds. all of us had rock hopped ahead, and as we looked back at eric, we see him take a huge fall. the lifeguard manages to pull him up and eric is sitting, hunched over. and then spontaneously, less from one kid and more from some spirit of love and compassion and unity that had been brewing unseen, erupts the most beautiful thing i had heard all day, maybe all month: "Eric, Eric, Eric." All the kids are cheering, yelling, for this strange, removed, unusual looking kid who was slowing them down, yelling for him to get up, yelling that he could do it. Oh my, it was beautiful. Aaron and I, the counselors, exchanged an amazed look.

and then fast forward a bit more to tuesday night, last night. we had been hopeful about the group all day, and we took them on a trust walk, where they line up single file with their eyes closed and hands on each others' shoulders, and walk around camp. the point is to trust the person in front of you. at one point, james, the kid with the anger management, said, "i don't trust anyone in this group." eric asked us to stop because he felt uncomfortable. i've been trying to remove the word failure from my vocab, but it sure felt like it.

i sat us in a circle in the grass to debrief. it was twilight, that transitionary time of day that always seems a bit magical to me. i said to the kids, how did that feel? what made it hard? and after a couple insightful comments, sai, one of the kids with aspbergers, obsessed with fictional tree warriors and sometimes making uncontrollable grunts, says just quietly enough for us to hear, "i have aspbergers."

i wish you could have been there. come with me for a second to a patch of grass right outside of the national park, in a two week camp with eleven 13 and 14 year olds, 8 of them labeled "red flags" by camp. sit in the circle as sai adams quietly tells a group of his peers, kids he has known for 48 hours, "i have aspbergers."

when we sit in the circle and have conversations, i like to tell the kids that the circle is a special way to sit and talk. a circle is unbroken, continuous. it creates a space for everyone to be held, to be trusting with one another, to say things like i have aspbergers to a group of kids who you don't even know how they they'll respond. i titled this "you open the window and you wait for the breeze." the circle is the open window. you create a space for these 11 kids, so many of whom have labels, who have been pigeonholed into a certain way of thinking and doing and being, and you let them be. you wait for the breeze to pass through, and when it does, you let it brush your face and your arms and your body and you say thank you for special moments like this.

so sai told the group what he had, and mitchell followed by telling the group he also had aspbergers. then matthew told the group he had cerebral palsy. and some kids talked about having adhd. they shared what it was like to live with these different things, the challenges they faced. matthew told the group he could only run a 12 minute mile on his best day because of his cerebral palsy, and the group gave a sympathetic moan. and they all listened like i had never heard them listen before, kids who sometimes couldn't make it through a 30 second round of instructions.

every bunk at camp has a theme. the theme aaron and i created was, "yes we can." we thought it was pretty funny, given that bob the builder and obama, and many civil rights groups, have adopted it as their mantra. i don't think we realized how appropriate it was for this group of kids. and at the end of our circle, when we got up, with everyone holding onto the magical talking shoe, and yelled out together "yes we can" at the top of our lungs, i learned again that the kids are always teaching me more than i'm teaching them. i learned that if they can, then i can, and you can, and we all can. no matter if we have aspbergers, cerebral palsy, depression, or just a plain bad day.

thank you for reading this, and for being a part of my circle.

love,
ryan

Why I Want To Be A Preschool Teacher

I recently began volunteering at a pre-school in Berkeley. On Tuesday I had a realization that my calling is to be a pre-school teacher. Today I was riding on the SF BART train when I began writing. Though at first I faced a very uncooperative writing utensil, I managed to get a start. By the time I reached Berkeley, I was so into what I was writing that I raced to the library, desperately found a bathroom, and sat and wrote like a madman, like I was a leaky vessel and someone was pouring water into me and I was just leaking all over the page. By the time I was done, I realized what I had written was a declaration of why I want to be a pre-school teacher.

 

Thinking about “allowing” related to children and then adults

 

As we grow and form our values and fears, we essentially take the stance that certain things are allowed, and others are not. Often we use the language of “should” to express this allowance and disallowance. “I should be this way.” “I shouldn’t think or feel this.”

Here are my questions: why do we do this? Does it work? And how does it make us feel?

 

Why we do this

When we’re kids, we are told explicitly and implicitly by parents, friends, media, musical, cultural and religious influences how we should feel, think, act, what is better and worse, what we can and can’t do. Basically, what is allowed.

Rarely are these phrased to us as ideas, or developing processes, as one possible way to do things. Instead, they are the way. We learn one language and one accent, and that is how to speak. We learn one way to treat sickness, and that is the correct, the only, way.

So we learn absolutes. Right. Wrong. What is allowed.

And unless we happen to travel, live with diversity, be exposed to open-minded people, we often don’t find out there are other ways, other viewpoints, other possibilities. Other right ways.

So if we don’t fit into this system of what is allowed, if even part of us doesn’t fit, two unfortunate things tend to happen. One, we rebel against what isn’t allowed, which can sometimes be excellent. Rebellion is what the civil rights movements, Gandhi’s salt marches, were. But in rebelling, we so often lose ourselves, angrily lashing out at what we perceive as oppressing us, filling ourselves with sadness or rage, losing sight of the original purpose to express ourselves. We end up hating. We conform by anti-conforming.

Or, option two; we go along with the system, burying that part of ourselves that doesn’t fit. But this takes such a terrible toll to hide it, it produces such a shame and closing up and distance. Just think about something you don’t like about yourself. How does it make you feel when you try to not be that way, not feel that way, when you try to fit into what you’re supposed to do and feel and be?

Alright, so we have this system, basically what is allowed and what isn’t. Before I go more into if the system has its own merits, let’s look at if it works.

What does it mean to “work?” Is our goal as a people, society or world to get people to be and do and act a certain way? If this is our goal (I will soon address how short this goal falls), then still it doesn’t work.

Take young kids. If we tell a kid not to cross a line, and he doesn’t understand why, or disagrees, here’s what happens. If he consents, maybe out of fear, or for a reward, or because he lacks the confidence to question authority or express what he believes, then you have begun to create a child who does things out of fear, or out of incentive, or due to lacking confidence.

And if he refuses? Often, especially because of how young he is, and because of the adult’s reaction to this disobedience, so much is lost. We lose his reasons for disobeying, we lose his courage to face authority and express what he believes. What could have been an empowering situation, what could have turned into a conversation about values and differences and understanding turns into an unconscious power struggle.

Here’s a crazy idea I just had. What if, as adults, we’re sometimes just plain wrong? What if we tell a kid not to cross a line, but that’s actually the right thing for him? Can we at least admit we might, sometimes, maybe, be partially wrong? That there are upwards of 6 billion human beings on this planet and there might be 6 billion right ways to do something? That throughout history knowledge and beliefs have constantly changed? That the only constant is that people almost always believe that their way is right? Leeches were once the right way, said Western science, to cure sicknesses. We laugh at this today but at one time this was right, according to them. Do you think they’d listen if you went back and told them they were wrong?

So how does all this allowing and disallowing make us feel?

Well, if our goal, as I suggest it at least partially should be, is to raise empowered, happy, safe children, then most certainly allowing/not allowing does not work, even if it does get people to fearfully or ignorantly comply. Because when the child agrees not to cross the line without knowing why, when he sees the adult doesn’t care to include him in the knowledge and process, or if perhaps the child wants to cross the line but is too scared to speak up, a whole paradigm is set into place: control. Disempowerment. Only allowing certain party of yourself. And excuse my language, but how the hell can we leave certain parts out? How can we not let ourselves be whole?

Back to adults. So when we’re adults, we internalize all of this “allowance” and “disallowance,” unconsciously. We are at times angry or sad or apathetic and we don’t know why. What we have inside is an army of “shoulds,” of allowed and not allowed. I am right. You are wrong. This part of me is right. This part of me is wrong. We feel all this pressure, because ourselves, our friends, our religion, or maybe just aliens from outer space, said so.

Our thoughts and emotions all come with positive and negative values. “I like girls.” I can think this. Good. Positive. “I like boys.” I can’t think this. Society and religion says it’s bad. Negative. And the negative thoughts come with a whole negative story attached. “I am sad. It’s bad to be sad.” Now we feel worse. We’ve created a whole story, an endless chain of thoughts, to go along with our “negative feeling.” We don’t understand this and now we feel out of control. Disempowered.

Would it be possible to live like we’re partly still kids, like we’re still learning, like we don’t know it all, like maybe we learned some things in a way that doesn’t suit us as well? When we’re kids we can say we don’t know. What makes us think we know any more when we’re older? Isn’t it possible we just know different things, that the kids know some stuff the adults forgot and they can teach us just like we can teach them?

So what happens when we embrace, when we allow? I see it on the faces of the kids all the time, the boundless, radiant joy, the most joyous smile you’ve ever seen. Something special, pure, beautiful. Something that melts your heart. Something that will change you. Something that will change the world.

It would be against the spirit of this to say I know all this I’ve said is right. I don’t. I don’t, and that, to me, is a beautiful thing. Can we find the joy in the process, not just the product? In the journey, not just the destination? Can we find the blessing in change, in not knowing?

A year ago I didn’t know or believe most of this. Perhaps a year from now I’ll believe different things. What I do know is that writing this has been fun as hell, that the process of growing and testing my knowledge and beliefs, of allowing, is incredible.

And you might believe something totally different. Good. Good. Can we come together and create a loving space where we allow for each other, for each other’s beliefs, for every part of ourselves? I wouldn’t want to live any way but whole. Would you?

And that, in the end, is why I want to be a preschool teacher. Or perhaps I should say, why I want to be in preschool. Because I’m not sure whether it’s me or the kids who are doing the teaching. Sometimes I have this crazy idea it’s both of us. At the exact time.

Silence Is Precious: Unless You Have Four Days Of It....

My nephews Ethan, 2 1/2 yrs old, and Jordan, 3 weeks.

They are unrelated to the following post, except that that they are just so darn cute.

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Ah, the joy of talking.

 

I just spent the last 3.5 days doing the exact opposite of talking. (Not talking, in case you hadn’t guessed yet.) I did this shutting of my mouth at a meditation retreat in Marin, CA, about 30 minutes from Berkeley, at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

Ooh, you’re probably thinking, meditation retreat. How calm and serene that must be!

Uh-uh. No siree. Guess again partner. Lemme give you our schedule just so you understand:

Retreat Schedule:

6:00 (a.m.) Wake up

6:30: Sitting meditation

7:00: Breakfast

8:30: Sitting meditation

9:30: Walking meditation

10:15 Sitting

11:00 Walking

11:45 Sitting

12:30: Lunch

1:30: Rest (thank God)

2:30 Sitting

3:00: Walking

3:45: Sitting

4:30: Yoga

5:15: Dinner

6:30: Sitting

7:00: Teacher Talk

8:00: Walking

8:45: Sitting

9:15: Sleep

 

Word has it the Dalai Lama himself looked at our schedule and said, “Damn, are you guys out of your f***king minds?”

So yes, that is the schedule we 60 or so silent people, ranging from ages 21 to 65, followed.  How was my experience?  Well, actually, it was really, really hard.

I soon discovered that sitting meditation ain’t exactly my forte. I was an anxious, wiggly-squiggly dude. And when I wasn’t wiggly-squiggly, I was falling asleep, or thinking the most random of thoughts. I mean, this kid named Chris Attisha from the third grade popped into my head. I haven’t thought of Chris in like 10 years! What are you doing in my head, Chris? Especially at a time like this!

The walking meditation wasn’t a whole heck of a lot better. Walking meditation is where you walk excruciatingly slow, focusing on feeling every step. It’s a little easier because you’re moving, but you also have to endure the heckle of snails on the ground passing you, jeering, “Look at these slow fools!”

I know so far I’ve given the impression that the retreat was really tough. And I do intend to keep giving that impression. But I must say, the food was incredible. Mostly vegan, all of it homemade and delicious and creative, I looked forward to those meals with salivating anticipation (don’t tell the teachers, I was supposed to be in the moment). And we couldn’t talk to anyone while we were eating, so we had no choice but to look into our delicious bowls of food and get lost in the wonderful, healthy tastes. (*Side note-only eat this much vegan food if you want to poop 4-6 times per day.)

To give a better idea of what exactly all this meditation business is about, it can be summed up in one word: mindfulness. Or you can call it awareness, consciousness, paying attention, being in the moment, being there. They all point to the same idea: notice your thoughts, notice your actions, instead of reacting or thinking unconsciously, like when you fly into a rage because your child put his used diaper in the fridge.

One way I started thinking about mindfulness is that it’s like having a really good, non-judgmental friend you respect and look up to. So when you start getting angry, or frustrated, or jealous, or expectant, or any of the whole range of emotions we experience every day, you have to tell your friend your thoughts: “Joe, I should be a funnier person,” or, “Joe, it seems like everyone is happier than me,” or, “Joe, I’m in such an angry rage I might punch my boyfriend in nose.” Joe, being the nice non-judgmental friend he is, won’t make you feel bad, or say don’t do that, or laugh at you. He’ll just smile at you and nod, or maybe just say a kind word. And in the mere act of being mindful, of identifying and labeling and acknowledging how and what you’re feeling, like magic much of the emotion disappears, or you at least gain some perspective on it.

But the great thing is, this friend is inside all of us!

Now, this whole mindfulness business is easier said than done. Much of the retreat I was bored, frustrated, sad, or looking forward to being back in civilized life. I kept haranguing myself for being a bad meditator, for not enjoying the experience as much as I thought others were. At many points, I eyed my keys in my backpack and thought how easy it would be to put my backpack in my car, drive back to Berkeley, mindlessly multi-task in peace….go to the cross-dressing party at the new co-op I moved into….

But I was committed. I didn’t go there to have a fun, easy experience. I went to learn more about myself, to be with myself in a way I never had been before. Silently, without distractions, without people.

Funny enough, my best and brightest moments of this retreat were when I made my own noise. There was going off by myself to hike on the trail after lunch, sitting on the ground, and having a 30 minute jam session with two sticks and a rock. Then on the last morning, vigorously humming the Rocky theme song while on the toilet. And lastly, this morning, when in the bathroom alone, breaking into an impromptu Circle of Life from Lion King (coincidentally, the song I played on piano at my first and only piano recital in third grade), complete with body gyrations.

What is to be learned from all of this? For one, I learned that we don’t all fit into a mold. Sitting meditation is a nice idea, and it has certainly done wonders for many people. But that’s not who or where I am right now. And it’s a huge trap I don’t want to fall into to say that I should be this, or I should be that. I know I feel the best when I’m active and physical and with people I love. That’s a precious thing to know, and value, worth a lot more I could ever earn at a job.

I keep thinking about this idea of my path. We so often live with this idea, thrown at us from all sides, that there is a certain way to do things. We get it in moral lessons from things like religion (which also does a lot of good, don’t get me wrong) or the media, or people, or even just our tendency to compare people. Advice is good, especially from those we love and trust. But we’re all teachers, if you ask me. And we’re all our own best teacher, when we’re mindfully in touch with ourselves.

It’s time to own my path. When he was 29 years old the Buddha left his secure life as a prince and went out on the road to find purpose in life. Jesus did much the same, essentially forming a new religion and taking on the Roman Empire.

I think I know what Jesus or Buddha or whoever else you look to for guidance would say, at least my version of them: follow your path, carve it every day in your tears and laughter and rushing footsteps and aches and gains. Follow the beating of your own heart. And don’t ever let anyone, most especially yourself, tell you that you’re anything but beautiful and capable and worthy of giving and receiving love. You are and I am and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. Lord knows I’ve fought myself long enough on this issue. You just have to say it enough times until you know it in the core of your being. I am worthy. I beautiful. I am good.

Contained in all this individuality is the most beautiful, unifying paradox I know: that we are one. We are all traveling our own unique path, and yet we are all traveling to the same end. Christians call it heaven, Buddhists call it Nirvana, and Jews call it bagels, lox and shmear (just kidding). Inherent in all these names are some unifying concepts—an end to suffering, finding peace, happiness. You can use different names but if you feel true joy and see it mirrored in the eyes of the one you look at, you know the words all just try to describe that same feeling.

So that’s some of what I learned. I learned you can take 4 really rough days and turn them into something you’ll carry in your heart for the rest of your life.

May you be well J

Ryan