"Fear or Love, Baby?" In AP English

Lots of people, from the time I was in high school till now, just call me Mueller.  I prefer that to Dr. Mueller to tell you the truth.  And it fits.  I am a mull-er - as in one who mulls.

I spend a lot of time inside my head, thinking and rethinking.  Turning things around, looking at all the angles I can find.  I don’t think it’s obsessive. I just ponder. A lot.

About 10 years ago, a showtune-loving friend of mine introduced me to the soundtrack of a musical called Tick Tick….Boom! It’s about a guy who is getting older and wondering if he is making the right choices in his life.  My favorite song in this show is called “Louder than Words.”  The refrain captures the central idea of the song, and the show (and many of my recent ponderings, and this essay):

Cages or wings?

Which do you prefer?

Ask the birds.

Fear or love, baby?

Don’t say the answer.

Actions speak louder than words.

Fear or love?

That question is one that I have been mulling for years. In this case, my mulling might be obsessive, because the binary of these two opposing forces permeates every bit of our existence, every choice we make in a day.

The answer, of course, is love.

But the question is bigger than it seems in its 10-letter simplicity.

Given the choice of those two things, who would choose fear?  

It turns out, Almost everyone. At least at some point.

• When we want to sing to the song playing in Wawa, but we don’t because someone might laugh.
• When we try so hard to be perfect so that we won’t be judged, that we undermine who we are and what we think
• When we don’t speak our mind about something we know is wrong, or something we know is right
• When we copy someone’s homework because we don’t want to say I don’t get it.
• When we don’t even try something because we might not be good at it.
• When we avoid having hard, but important conversations
• When we try so hard to fit in that we give up our genuine self for one that we think is more socially acceptable
  
• When we worry more about getting an A than learning something
• When we worry more about being cool than being good
• When we detach from people to protect ourselves from heartbreak
• When we detach from ourselves to protect ourselves from feeling things that hurt
• When we allow the judgments (or imagined judgments) of others to control what we do
• When we are caught in a scarcity mindset, and we berate ourselves for not being smart enough, thin enough, talented enough, successful enough, attractive enough, hard-working enough, nice enough - enough of anything
• When we don’t tell people we love how we feel, because it might sound weird, or we might be rejected.
• When we aren’t honest with ourselves, or with others, because the truth may be too scary, or painful, or make someone think differently about us (and I don’t mean honest in that way people do when they say they are being honest but they are just being mean)
• When we are mean.

I have made all of those fear choices and then some. Well, maybe not the copying homework one, but I have given my homework to be copied - out of fear of not being cool. My fear list is too long to fit in one paper, or one period, or one year, and I am not yet brave enough to list them all.  But I am working on it.  

Because when I ask myself Fear or love, baby?, about my motives, about my actions, about the values I live out in my life, and in this classroom, I always want love to be the answer.  This fear/love dichotomy has become increasingly clear to me over the last two years.  And one of the main things I have figured out in my mulling (and some reading, and just the general living of life, and, mostly the inspiration I take from my best friend) is that the route to both of them passes through vulnerability.  

I imagine if I asked most of you what it means to be vulnerable, weakness might be the first thing that comes to your mind.  I think that is a fear-based view of vulnerability.  Anything we look at through the fear lens automatically takes on a negative bent.  I prefer a definition of vulnerability given by Brene Brown, a Ph D in social work who is doing amazing research on the role of shame and vulnerability in our lives, and how we can overcome shame to embrace vulnerability.  She defines vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.  We have to be vulnerable to love.  And to grow, and to create.  There is nothing weak in any of that. In fact, to be vulnerable takes great courage.  

While I am defining terms here, the word courage, which we have come to think of as describing the bravery of people in battle, and facing down monsters, comes from the Latin root cor, which means heart.  The seat of our feelings.  So love and courage are inextricably connected at the heart level.  Neither exist in the absence of fear, but both can put fear to rest.

So I am trying to look at everything I do through a lens of love, rather than through the fear that so often predominates in how we go through our days.  I really do ask myself, is this an act of love, or fear? About lots of things during my day.  And I try to skew my actions toward acting out of love - love of others, love of life, love of myself, which is probably the hardest for me.

When I shared all of this mulling with my friend, it amplified.  Like harmonic resonance.

Our mantra this past year – one that took us both through some tremendous joys and some excruciating travails – has been “Love is stronger than Fear.”  I have seen her live that out every day, in the quiet courage of getting up every morning to face whatever the world has in store, doing things that scare her, looking at things she thinks she cannot do, and then doing them. And I have found in her an example that I have never had before, of another type of courage -the kind of trust that lets you be vulnerable and believe that you will be safe.  That lets you say things you might not otherwise say.  That let’s you own things about yourself that you might rather push away, but that ultimately allow you to grow taller and stronger than you ever imagined.    

Hers is the inspiration I bring to the end of this summer as I mull the upcoming school year.  I ask myself how do I teach AP English from a place of  love and courage?  What will love and courage look like in our classroom this year?

I don’t know for sure, but I know a few things.

In order to learn and grow we have to be vulnerable. We have to start from a place of not knowing.  We have to let go of our need to be cool, and perfect, and right, (even though I know that i n other places, school misguidedly insists is the ultimate best goal) and all those things that come out of fear that we try to convince ourselves are strength, because they are obstacles in the way of our authentic becoming.  We have to be willing to show up bravely in our day, every day.  

And we have to know that sometimes we are going to fail at those things. And that’s ok. It might be scary as hell. And it might make us feel bad for a bit. And it won't be easy or pretty, or fun.  But those failures don’t mean that we are not good enough.  They just mean we are beautifully, imperfectly human.

Accepting that is the heart of courage and love.

Another question posed in that refrain, "cages or wings, which do you prefer?"  Is that same fear orlove question. It is our fears that cage and limit us, and our willingness to step beyond that into love - love of others, love of life, love of ourselves, hopefully love of English class, that gives us wings and lets us see the world out beyond fear.  And it is beautiful.