Right Brain Boot Camp
Freestyle Rapping Club
Sign Language Club
Arabic Club
Infographic Club
Ultimate Frisbee Club
This year, though, I am trying something different in establishing the UPWORTHY club.
Our first session began with a discussion of why we'd chosen to join the club. My hope was to come to an agreement of our purpose over the course of the next 10 weeks.
"I want to make people happy," one girl said.
"There's too much sad, frustrating news," another boy remarked, "and I want to be reminded that there are uplifting things, too."
Finally, another student added, "Everyone just seems so anxious...I want to help spread the idea that there is good in the world."
Each of these reasons made me grateful for the students and for the group's existence. I found it encouraging that these students truly wanted to find ways to uplift and inspire those around them. It was the first comment, though, that caused us the greatest discourse.
We talked about what it means to be happy.
Bobby McFerrin sang, "Don't worry, be happy."
Joy, in Pixar's Inside Out, blindly pursues a world devoid of problems and negativity.
Yet both of these examples present happiness as a binary measurement. You are either happy or you are unhappy.
How many other things could you be, though? With a hearty dose of inspiration from the online comic, The Oatmeal, I have thought lots about what it means to be happy in the past week. Parents often remark that their hope for their children is "that they will be happy." Yet there is something missed there. People who are engaged and passionate in the most meaningful ways tend to not be happy. But they're not unhappy, either. Instead, they are energized, joyous, exhausted, depleted...they are in pain, they are frustrated, they are driven and absorbed, ecstatic, euphoric, and on the verge of combustion.
Criss Jami, in his book (well, two books) Killosophy, writes that
"...excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he's ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial."
Is the artist, the poet, the performer, the educator, the politician happy during these moments caught in the presence of true awesomeness?
Perhaps not, but they are certainly driven. They feel a sense of purpose. They are whole.
There are so many things to feel in the world, but--as my students in the Upworthy Club began to teach me--happy cannot be made the endgame of adolescence. If it is, then people who are not happy begin to feel as though there is something wrong with them, that they carry an emotional burden, the weight of which is too great for their network, their community,
There is so much passion, so much energy, so much simultaneous hope and despair and exploration in the life of a teenager. It's unreasonable to expect them to be a single thing all the time. I often share this image with parents and students as a means of illustrating all of the ways an adolescent student is prepared to engage with the world.
Is the student above happy? Probably not. But what if they stand for justice, seek freedom, look within themselves, question authority, and tether themselves to a cause for which they care? They're smiling, yes, but they're probably a little frantic, a little romantic, and very overwhelmed.
But, then again, are people who change the world usually happy?
I don't think so. Instead, they are the kind of people who grieve for what they know is possible, for what they believe we--as a collective humanity--are capable of becoming. In short, they are engaged. And they are struggling to explore their capabilities...they are expanding their ceilings.
In our first meeting of the Upworthy Club we weren't happy. We were a little sad, a little realistic, but we were each wholly present and honest with each other. Most importantly, we were in a room where we felt known and heard, and where we saw the future history of the difference we want to make in the hallways and classrooms of our school beginning to take shape. We were grieving for the present, and we were hopeful for the future.
It reminds me of a favorite Faulkner quote: "Given the choice between grief and nothing, I'd choose grief." I used to think this quote was grim, but as I consider it now, I wonder...what other choice is there, really?
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