I’ve been holding a series of classes based around the idea of value. I’m seeking to uncover what student’s value and what they see as important enough in their lives to suffer for. The key to these conversations has been the idea of passion and what it means. To most passion is conflated with love. There is truth in that belief, but passion is more truthfully about suffering and chiefly about the willingness to suffer for some goal or greater purpose.
The particular class I’m sharing these ideas with is teeming with young minds—teens and post-teens filled with the belief of their own immortality and hesitant to care about anything more than the smoke in front of their faces. Occasionally I’ll get an older student in the bunch who gets it; gets the opportunity they’ve been handed. As a husband and father I would welcome the opportunity to focus, if just for 75 minutes twice a week, on figuring out what keeps my heart beating and how to better myself. The classroom is exactly that opportunity, but I don’t see many students having the wherewithal to take advantage of that. Instead they wait impatiently for the moment to pass so they can get a grade and get back to their lives.
We miss so much while rushing to the next tomorrow. Could it be that there were opportunities to become a better person today?