Mary Oliver, "Sometimes"
This got to me immediately. When I pay attention, really pay attention, being astonished moves in. I am living, now in my 89th year. When I look around me, when I look back over all my years, so much to be astonished. I was a classroom teacher for more than forty years and continued teaching teachers for twelve more. Since 2006 I have written books (seven so far and have a Substack and blog).
It is astonishing, all of it. But I did not always see it that way. I did know that every day with my children, with my students, I was in a wonderful place. What’s better than being a part of the lives of the young––perhaps 8,000 of them for me (hard to guess)––to know their names, their thoughts, being present with them, and they with one another. In class, on the field, in the community, from seven to seventeen years old in three countries. That is astonishing.
And I’m astonished that my wife and I (she initiated it) have chosen to live in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, (almost on a whim) now for fourteen years. Fourteen years!
And I am here to Tell about it, another revelation from Oliver’s “Instructions for living a life.” In looking back I believe I was born to “tell about it.” At four years old, my mother told me that I stood naked at my parents inn in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Yes naked, “I’m Tommy Thoms, Come in, Come in!” Throughout my childhood I wanted to tell stories, to be heard, to be in the middle.
In college, I delivered musings nearly every day at the waiter’s table in my fraternity. Musings, yes, but probably not much substance, but musings they were. One of my fellow waiters at the end of the table would reach back and plug in his imaginary philosophy machine: “Here goes Frank again!”
And then I became a teacher. “To tell about it” was my first motivation for becoming one. But it turned out not to be about telling. Soon I chose to leave the front of the room so as not to become a deliverer, a conduit, which would have been a one-way “tell-about-it” career. In my first year, I replaced desks in rows with a horseshoe. From there, teaching became a conversation, my students and I talking and listening to one another. I did my telling in between my students’ tellings.
In the early 2000s, since leaving the classroom, from the publication of my first book, Teaching from the Middle of the Room, I have been eager to tell about my life, especially my life as a teacher. Hence, my seven books, Substack, and blog.
Mary Oliver nailed it, if I may use that aphorism. Living life is first about paying attention, really paying attention. We are here, given our one life.
Second, it’s recognizing the astonishment that surrounds us––that is us.
And third, telling about our lives, our hopes, fears, conundrums, setbacks, successes…
I hope you don’t hold back on sharing who you are, what you know, who you are becoming. We humans need each other for survival since the beginning of our species on the African savannah. We sat around campfires being human together, telling stories.
We have created a wondrous world amidst the struggles of famine, wars, and disease. You, who are reading this, are especially fortunate to have been able to choose your life process and not have to worry where your next meal would come.
Now we are being challenged by our own creation, AI, which threatens to change who we are, what we do.. We need to pay attention to AI, be astonished with its abilities, and tell each other what we think. How we respond, who we are, what we do, is up to us.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward” (Kierkegaard). I write 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. My latest book, Teacher in the Rye: Doing It My Way is available on Amazon. And I welcome comments here on my Blog or by email at frankthoms3@gmail.com.
