Everything is change sounds like the title of a self-help book.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote that we are here to help each other through this thing, whatever this thing is. Self-help? More like I’ll help you and you help me. The truth is we are powerless without each other, though most of us learn to stick to ourselves. To live in our own worlds rather than share this one. The truth is we ought to figure out how to live together in this world that is made up of our many worlds.
What a psychedelic thing to write.
***
The phrase everything is change comes to me this morning as I write this sentence. I am not sure why.
This summer, I’m writing a book with my friend Erin. It is about teaching and learning. Erin and I typically write academic books. This book is kind of academic. But it is kind of conversational too. We’re trying to leave the string citations out. Make it more readable for anybody who reads. APA citation can turn a certain audience off.
In our book we tell stories about being teachers and learners. And we are trying to understand how the need to control and be controlled stifles learning. And we are trying to understand how embracing transformation is learning. We are doing all of this in present tense. It is a wild book so far. I like wild things.
Everything is change, I think Erin and I think, and we ought to teach ourselves and others to embrace that change. Love isn’t coercive, and the heart of everything we ought to be doing – including teaching and learning – is love.
And here I can’t help but to laugh at myself. My self-help musings are going off the rails. I’m John Lennon. I’m Gandhi. I’m Jesus. I’m suggesting that everything we do should be in-service of love and, as such, we ought to give up any and all of our coercive tendencies. Self-help? Maybe just help.
***
Last week felt like the first week of summer vacation. I had very little to do. I played basketball. I worked on a book with my friend Erin. I walked around Iowa City. I drank coffee. It was a good week.
I also had trouble falling asleep. I also felt like my routine was disrupted. I also felt unsettled. It was a good week and a bad week. Things are multiple, stupid. Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. We contain multitudes, stupid.
Please know I’m kidding. I don’t think you’re stupid. It makes me laugh to call my reader stupid when I write. I do think all of us are kind of stupid. We forget we contradict ourselves. We forget we contain multitudes. Thank goodness for Walt Whitman. Thank God, too.
I turned 45 last week. My birthday always comes with a inherent present. June 9th means summer vacation. And for me, somebody who has spent their life in schools, I’ve opened this present a million times. I exaggerate. I’ve opened it 39 times, presuming I started school when I was six, at Sunny Hollow Montessori in St. Paul, Minnesota. I presume because I don’t really remember much about being six. But I’m sure I was excited when school was over. Who isn’t excited when school is over? Losers, that’s who.
I’m kidding again. Kind of.
Anyway, everything is change and it always will be. A great author once wrote a book about coming to terms with change. And by great author I mean me, a humble Samuel Jaye Tanner, PhD, making my way through whatever this thing is with the hope that we might help each other by giving up our need to control and be controlled and, instead, embracing love.
Samuel Jaye Tanner 