"Whatever that storm may be"

A novel, a tweet, a short story, an article, and a poem.

This week I absorbed five memorable pieces of "literature."

I read Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher.

I read "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez with my students.

I read "[The Day With All its Pain Ahead is yours]" by Derek Wolcott, again with my students.

I read an article entitled "A revolution in tenderness" by Courtney Martin on Krista Tippett's On Being website.

Finally, I read the following tweet, this morning:

Each of these literary stimuli provided me with an opportunity to reflect. To pause. To slow down and appreciate the importance of simply being AND being simple. So here is what I learned from each of these additions to my own heart's library of canonical merit.

1. Thirteen Reasons Why

Conversation around this book (and the concomitant Netflix series) has been widespread in schools. I read the book because my students were reading it and I always want to understand them better. My takeaway was that it starts a conversation. But the conversation cannot be skipped. We can't let young people walk away from the story of Hannah Baker's suicide thinking "One missed opportunity could have reversed someone's depression, isolation, or mental health struggles." That might work in the role play, the video game, or the Netflix series...but---and I speak from experience here--depression is about the chemicals in our brains, it's beyond convincing, rationalizing, or believing...it is a disorder that extends beyond the widest scope of our collective understanding. Not only does it look different, feel different for everyone, it cannot be understood by anyone outside of the skin they're inhabiting. And the triggers in this book are intense...too intense...dangerously intense. Nevertheless, my biggest take-away is that we need to push the conversation. Kids want to talk. Adults need to talk. Human beings need connection. We need to ask how our friends are and we need to mean it and wait for the answer. We need to be better listeners and reacquaint ourselves with the people with whom we interact. People need people. And that takes all of us. I am not advocating for anyone to read the book, but the book reminded me that there are things we feel that must be acknowledged (a great follow-up book would be Jamie Tworkowski's If You Feel Too Much, or his short memoir article, "To Write Love on Her Arms").

2. "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World."

I read this story with my 8th grade English class. As my students reflected upon the magical realism embedded within the story of Esteban, the giant who washed up on the shores of a small Spanish village, they moved beyond themselves. They grasped the magnitude of a man who was, quite literally, beyond measure, and they saw the human need to believe in someone who could save them. Even in his death and the mystery of his origin, Esteban transforms a village and reframes reality for the lives of the people who encounter his legend. "Just think," one student said, "what it would have been like if we could see the impact that one dead man, and the villagers' willingness to believe in miracles, could have had on the future generations."

3. "[The Day With All its Pain Ahead is yours]"

Derek Wolcott's piece taught me there are stories in the subtexts of the stories we tell, the poems we live. In the contrasting imagery between beauty and pain, Wolcott's words remind us that in the midst of our heart's ache for carpe diem, the world humbles us as it ruins us and destroys us, in ways that--as a direct result of pain experienced, hardship endured, mistakes made--grow and prune us in both wisdom and experience.

4. "A revolution in tenderness"

While TED talks are often criticizes for sustaining a spirit of "slacktivism" without action, in Courtney Martin's response to the Pope's TED talk, she pushes the narrative beyond consumption and assigns emotional homework. While the Pope asks,

 “And what is tenderness? It is the love that comes close and becomes real. It is a movement that starts from our heart and reaches the eyes, the ears and the hands. Tenderness means to use our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, to listen to the children, the poor, those who are afraid of the future.”

Martin replies,

"So this week, I’m going to do an experiment. I’m going to slow down wherever and whenever I feel tenderness — in myself or others — and actually experience it. I’m going to use my eyes and ears to take it in, to express it, to make it real in public. I’m going to, as the TEDsters might say, “disrupt” the dominant culture — not with a new app or a crazy idea — but with the unorthodox assumption that there is room enough for tenderness, here and now, always. Join me?"

Disrupting the dominant culture with tenderness was the life work of Siddartha Gautama, Asoka, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. It's got a good track record of revolution in the midst of weakness.

5. "...worry smaller"

@Jomnysun is one of my favorite follows on Twitter. According to his bio he is "aliebn confuesed abot humamn lamgauge." 

But the reality is that he's so much more than that. He is also an alien confused by the essence of being human, and the art of doing it well. By witnessing the lenses through which an outsider might view the layers of "normalcy" our species has adopted, we can better understand ourselves.

The idea of worrying smaller is a beautiful one. While the idea of "one day at a time" isn't a new one, it is a valuable reminder that, while you only live once, if you do it right once is enough. This doesn't mean perfection, however. Rather, it means remembering to breathe, to cherish, to accept, to collect data from your experiences, to grow wiser in the midst of the storm (whatever that storm may be).