Believing in the impossible: Wisdom from a painter
After de Kooning acknowledges, like the fishermen, “I feel so good here, because painting is make-believe, too, where I’m also trying to do the impossible…We both know it’s impossible. But it doesn’t matter, as long as we believe it might be possible one day.”
Isn’t that why we teach, perhaps more “impossible” than other professions. Unpredictable politicians interfering in what they no little about, administrators who may not understand, parents wanting only for their child, and students, who like the fish, impossible to “catch.”
But to be a teacher is to believe. Otherwise why do it? And like the fishermen, “We both know it’s impossible. But it doesn’t matter, as long as we believe it might be possible one day.”
We think of our own lives. If we have children, we realize that our casting of ideas, hopes, and wishes often come up empty. In the classroom, we recognize students may not be with us, anticipating messages on their devices whether they are there or not. Despite sensing impossibility, we cast anyway.
Given that “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward” (Kierkegaard), I write this Blog to bring ideas and methods from my life as a teacher in the latter half of the 20th century to help teachers and the public to “live forward” in this century.
