C.S. Lewis said we read to know we are not alone. That's also why writers write, or at least one of the big reasons I do.
Kurt Vonnegut put it this way: "Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about. You are not alone." It's a magical exchange to find out I am not a lonely island on a vast sea, and at the same time let others know they are not alone, either.
If one person reads what I write and feels validated, understood, comforted, challenged, seen, whatever--if anyone relates--I feel success. Like it mattered. I feel alive.
When I was asked to write these columns, I wanted to know what subject I should write about. "Just be yourself," I was told. "Write about whatever you want, whatever comes into your head." I'm obviously following those directions.
"You really can't be pigeonholed, and that's refreshing. You keep us guessing." I don't exactly know what that means. All I do is tell the truth as I see it from my one little window in rural Arkansas. Fling out my gossamer thread in hopes it might catch somewhere.
The truth today is that my brain is mush. It is finals week. The week when English teachers in universities all over the world question their choice of occupation. For me there is no Scantron Score machine, no multiple choice, no fill in the blank. It's just essays. Piles and piles of essays on top of my desk and on the floor around my office. My eyeballs are falling out. I've used enough red ink to stage a murder scene. And I don't want to know anything else, ever, about the theme of blindness in Oedipus the King.
Teaching is like writing. No one does it solely for the money. The most glorious thing is that you get to be a part of students' lives, even if only for a moment. A character in their stories. And they become part of yours.
This fall my story has expanded to include students who are refugees from Myanmar. They have helped me to be more grateful for things we tend to take for granted, like a house that protects us from rain and cold, nutritious food, clean water. They've reminded me that America--and Arkansas--is still a land of opportunity, a beacon of hope for tired, poor, huddled masses still yearning to breathe free.
I met a welder who thought he was terrible at English before he wrote about riding a bull and earned the top grade in the class. A high school dropout, daughter of an illegal immigrant and mother of twins who survived being severely burned at her job brazing copper. A girl who was homeschooled but not taught, instead used as a maid until she broke away, earned her GED, and made it to college. A former felon in the process of rebuilding her life, learning for the first time how smart and capable she is and how big and beautiful the world.
A survivor of abuse. An entrepreneur. A woman who was homeless at the beginning of the semester but somehow managed to do her work with excellence and get back on her feet. A young gay man afraid to come out to his parents. A veteran with PTSD. Students who want to be nurses, even now. Especially now. A woman older than me whose biggest educational obstacle was having few computer skills. A guy with parents in prison who had never seen the correct spelling of his own name. A kid who won scholarships by showing pigs at the county fair.
I'm not making this up. In what might seem to be a place with little potential for diversity--a branch campus in a small town in Arkansas--these are just a few of my students. Each one, like ourselves and every other human we encounter, has a story. At the end of every semester I'm compelled to wonder: What was my role in that story?
There are always regrets and disappointments, times I know I missed opportunities. Sometimes a student can't be reached because of my many limitations--time, lack of expertise, flawed humanity. Those stories haunt me. I want to be a character to them who loved and helped the best she could, in all of the ways she could. God knows it's not always easy to be sure what love and help look like; some people need a hug while others need a kick in the rear. Most of us need a combination of both. Like parenting, the responsibility can be overwhelming.
But there's always a reason to keep showing up. I received this message via Instagram the other day: "Hello! Sorry this is out of the blue. I'm graduating. I know we haven't been in contact often, but you really did a lot to convince me to stay in school. If you can make it that's great! If not that's fine! I know it's short notice. Take care!!"
The guy's face instantly came to mind. I could see him in his seat at the end of the row, shoulders bent over a paper. Flannel. Boots. Messy brown hair. His eyes said Please don't call on me; I don't want to talk. Mine answered, You have come to the wrong place for that. Please, old woman, have mercy. Let me fly under the radar; have this hour to disappear. No way. Sorry but I don't know how to do that. We need your darkness, your story, your wisdom here.
He was tired already, more tired than any kid ever should be. Leaning toward cynical. World weary. A John Steinbeck, Thoreau, Wallace Stevens writing The Snow Man. Maybe T.S. Eliot. Somehow ironically still innocent. Searching. And brilliant. A flickering candle of dreams you want to shield from wind beyond your control. And deep inside him the sheer will and courage to shine. Because I was his teacher I got the privilege of drawing that out.
Shine he did. And light he will continue to be in this world.
One student, like one reader, can make all of the difference. We're not alone. And we need each other to remind us sometimes what it means to matter, to be alive.
I still have about 100 papers to grade. Miles and miles to go before I sleep. But neither hell nor high water could keep me away from that kid's graduation.
Ozark native Gwen Ford Faulkenberry is a mother, teacher and author.