The doing is the thing

As a teacher of  high school juniors and seniors, I often find myself engaged in conversations about their futures.  Some of them are very sure of what they want to do with their lives.  But more commonly their voices are infused with confusion, sometimes bordering on panic, when they say, "How can I know what I want to do?  I'm only 17?"  Even though I knew in high school that I wanted to be a teacher, I understand the question.  They are exposed to relatively few real world experiences in high school.  They want to know "What will I use this for?" 

As their English teacher, I want them to know that they will use reading and writing everywhere, no matter their career path.   I also want them to see that their English teacher doesn't just teach them about other people's writing, and make them write essays galore just for the joy of grading them. I want them to know I write, and I struggle with the same things about it they do.  That's why I am posting this.  Explanation included below.

Thank you, Amy

Amy Poehler is my friend.

Only in my head, unfortunately, but it has proven to be a friendship important - maybe even life changing.

Our relationship started when she was on SNL, but then she was mostly the cool kid I admired from a distance. My favorite part of SNL was Weekend Update where, throughout that news broadcast parody she slipped many truthful insights about the follies and foibles of human behavior.  And her Sarah Palin rap was one of the most brilliant and hilarious things I have ever seen on television.

Our relationship deepened when my real-life friend Megan McCafferty (NYT best-selling YA author and Central Regional HS graduate) brought me and several students into a project she was involved in through a group called Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls at the Party. The students, all brilliant and insightful high school junior and senior girls, had the opportunity to engage in a technologically mediated conversation, facilitated by Megan via Google Hangout, with YA authors Gayle Foreman (If I Stay) on one occasion and Cammie McGovern (Say What You Will) on another.  How could I not be friends with someone who recognizes the value of embracing reading as a way to explore and converse with the larger world, and who supports young people by making rare opportunities like Ask! Authors! Anything! possible? My imaginary friendship with Amy Poehler became a little more real for me the other day as I was reading the introduction to her book Yes Please.  I picked it up in Barnes and Noble one day, in part because of our imaginary friendship, but even more because of the title.  Yes Please.  I like yes. I like positivity.  I like that yes opens doors and creates possibilities.  Yes is liberal and open-minded.  Yes is affirming and encouraging and celebratory.  Yes is not No (which we need sometimes too, but we need more yes). And Yes Please?  It’s courteous to boot; I am a big advocate of what is sometimes not-so-common common courtesy.

Now, whether real or imaginary, I have never made friends quickly or easily. I am relatively shy and kind of awkward and nerdy. I am far more intro than extro verted.  And I expect a lot of my friends;  I think one of the most important things a friend can do, which many are reluctant to, is hold up a mirror and show you to yourself. You need that - we all do. I try to welcome that mirror when I come across it. It isn’t always easy, but I think I am a good listener and I reflect a lot on the kind of person I want to be and how I can put things into the world that will leave it a little bit better when I am through here.   I know I want to do that, in some small way, through writing.  (And teaching, of course, but those two things go together, as you will see in a minute.)

So there I was on Wednesday, sitting on the front stoop in the sun on that first slightly warm, you-can-tell-spring-is-coming-eventually day.  I had vowed before sleep Tuesday night that I would get up early and write.  I didn't.  Then I promised myself I was going to go home and write. But I was reading instead. I was reading because I couldn't make myself write - writing is hard, and scary, and has so very many opportunities for failure and embarrassment.  Almost everything else feels easier, sometimes.  I know you understand that.

And right then my friend Amy held up the mirror.  It was a small mirror, but it must have been in HD because what is showed was so clear. There, in the preface of Yes Please, she asks herself the same questions about writing that  I do.  And you do.  She asks, “What do we do?  How do we move forward when we are tired and afraid?” And then she answers.  

You just dig in and write it. You use your body.  You lean over the computer and stretch and pace.  You write and then cook something and write some more.  You put your hand on your heart and feel it beating and decide if what you wrote feels true.  You do it because the doing of it is the thing.  The doing is the thing.  The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing. (xv)

My breath caught for a second.  I put the book down.  My eyes may have even welled up, though I was attributing that to early spring pollen.

Your friends tell you things when you need to hear them.  Even if you don’t think you need them.  Even when you think you already know. And my friend Amy was was calling me out.

Don’t worry, I do know that in the real world Amy Poehler and I aren’t friends.  But she did hold up the mirror just when I was ready to look into it.  And I knew then that I was going to dig in and do the thing.

The thing right now is a blog I started a long time ago.  It’s called “Nuts and Flowers,” which is an allusion to a passage from Thoreau’s journal that explores the way our brains work.  It’s about learning and teaching.  At least that’s what I want it to be about - I haven’t posted anything in months.  But I’m going to post this, even though it’s not much.  And I’m going to write more.  Be forewarned: I may write about you and me and what we do here.  Don’t worry - I won’t use your names and I won’t embarrass anyone, except possibly myself.

Better that embarrassment than losing another adventure to being tired and afraid.  The mirror showed me that.  Thank you, Amy.