We Must Be The Change

I was meeting with an eighth grade student today, one who I have had the privilege of knowing over the past three years.  She is a creative soul and an award-winning artist.  Paige has been an active member of my Destination Imagination team and we have had great conversations about life.  I'm getting ready to miss her next year, along with my other graduating students.

Paige's winning Artist's Corner Entry

While we were chatting, she told me that she hadn't noticed how much she had grown as an artist until she looked at her past sketchbooks.  Then, and only then, could she see how her strokes had grown more controlled and her artwork more nuanced.  I saw her eyes twinkle with pride and energy while she reflected on this.

Change happens slowly.  It often creeps up on us.  And yet, when I choose to live intentionally as a teacher and role model, or when Paige tries to live intentionally as an artist, we aim towards certain changes and they don't always come fast enough.

Me at 6, 15, and 40

Weight creeps up on me.  Gray hairs and wrinkles do,  too.  The face in the mirror which stares back isn't the wild child I imagine myself to be.

Wisdom seeps through me, often unnoticed.  I remember how insecure I was in my first years (decade?) of teaching.  Now, I know I will make mistakes and I still am open to risks when they mean helping students or trying out new ideas.  Sometimes I write and I don't know where the ideas come from.  Lots of sleepless nights?  Hours of pondering while singing at the piano?  Many wishes spent on stars?  I don't know.

Society changes too.  When I started college, my neighbor Susan Petry told me not to worry about bringing too many stamps to school. "Before you know it, you will be writing to me through your computer."  I looked at her like she was crazy.  Sure, my mom teaches science fiction; my neighbor, though, was a woman of mysteries and science.  I expected her to be more logical than such dreams.

Sure enough, though, email popped up, then Friendster and Myspace and Facebook.  The whole world changed.  Slowly and yet so quickly, phones stopped being used for conversations.  Instead, they are used as maps, as quick text machines, as songfinders.    How did this happen?

When my mother started with the internet, I warned her that she needed to use it as a tool and not let it be her tool.  She has honored that, despite an stress-release addiction to an arcade style game called Snood.  But too many people fall into the internet worlds.  I have several teenage friends who don't spend their time expanding their artwork or playing improvisational games like Paige does.  They aren't playing soccer or searching for a magical Idlewild nature space like my friend TJ and I used to. They are in the safety of online second worlds, and soon those worlds become more real than face to face interaction.

What other changes sneak up on us?

When my students ask about why so many threatened people stayed in Europe at the beginning of the war, I shake my head.  It wasn't always that they had no place to go.  It wasn't always that they lacked the money.  Too often, it was that they didn't believe that the unthinkable could happen.  The change was too close to them for them to notice it.

Depression sneaks up too, as does addiction. People get used to feeling a certain way. Then it gets worse and worse and it's hard to remember how things used to be.

BUT!  Joy can sneak up, too.  There was a time period in my life when I couldn't have imagined going a day without crying.  Now it's the norm.

Kindness can sneak up, too, even on a global scale.   There are big problems today; I won't deny it.  However, we consider certain behaviors brutal today which would have been nothing out of the ordinary in the past.

So, these two sayings may be overused, but I think of Paige and her artwork.  She has a dream and works towards it.  She goes confidently in the direction of her dreams; through her art, she is, slowly, the change she wants to see in the world.  And, because she is an artist, she forever aspires higher.

What do you aspire for?