A Bit Rambly and Strange

I have stared at this screen for twenty-six minutes. For twenty minutes it was blank. Then I put photographs in, and stared some more. I know I must say something, I know I must say something, I know I must say something, but I don't know what to say.

Being a student is difficult, and scary, and requires that one be brave.

Being a teacher is not so different, at least in this way.

For most of my life, I think, I confused being brave with being tough, and being tough with being hard. Being hard is not being tough. Hard can mean impenetrable, like stone, and that is no way to live. Hard can also mean shelled, but inside we are undeveloped mush, and that is no way to be. Tough, rather, is like leather, enduring but giving, soft but somehow difficult to penetrate. I find toughness a very attractive quality in people, but there's a price to toughness. What once was tender is then stretched and burned and broken in by hard experiences, and while it can be good, it is costly.

But brave isn't either of these qualities. It doesn't belong to the brave to be hard, and while the tough may be brave, the bravest are not always tough. This adventure, I am learning, requires me to be brave, which means that I am scared beyond my wit can measure.

But it isn't bad, you know. It is not bad to feel small, and to be unsure of yourself or where you are exactly. It is not bad to question what you do and don't know, who you are and what you are made of. Don't tell my students, but I am not really a teacher. Maybe by accident, yes. Maybe I do what a teacher does, or rather I sit where a teacher sits, but when I think of great teachers, I'm thinking of saints, and heroes, of people who know really and truly what the deal with this human thing is. It is much more than can be contained in a classroom.

I think this post will make more sense tomorrow, when I explain what I saw this morning, and dive deeper into what Poland means in my imagination. For now, I go to watch my video. I have started to practice Polish, and my hosts are teaching me the Hail Mary. This is much tougher than teaching, but at the end of a long day's lessons, I am happy to be on this much safer side.