Had occasion to enjoy a museum today. It’s funny. I spent k-6 getting off the bus in front of the. MET and never recognizing the beauty of what was at the top of those steps. I think youth is like that. We get so wrapped up in the immediacy of what is important to us that we can easily forget to open our hearts and minds to the beauty of possibility.
Now I sit here flanked by a thousand years of culture and art and all I can think is that the little boy I was all those years ago is so very reminiscent of the students I encounter every day. If something doesn’t matter to them immediately or doesn’t conform to their often narrow worldview then that something is dismissed usually out of hand. We watch hours of television filled with catchy slogans like ‘Go anywhere. do Anything” (Jeep), but they never go anywhere unless it is the falsehood of vacation. They never do anything that is more than a contrived opportunity to forget what they did in the bliss of alcohol. Voices coalesce in classrooms like the droning of worker bees seeking their next assignment. Among the din rises a handful of voices curious and brave, wondering about the possibility of more and I strive to answer their charge–meet their questioning with a sense of purpose and the courage to tell them that experimentation is okay. Failure is okay. Learning is an experiment. Failure is an opportunity to see what is right for you and what is not.
None of this made sense to the little boy who only wanted to get to the playground fast enough to catch the last few moments of stoop ball. None of this makes sense to the hungry college kid slaving at a dead end job for 34 hours a week only to come home to 16 more hours of homework that reads like an alien tongue. Perhaps the student and the little boy were not ready. Perhaps there would’ve been a better time or situation for the exposure.
But when? I still believe in creating opportunity out of the moments we have and reaching deep into the soul to find out what resides there. Art exposes that part of ourselves. Moreover, even when we aren’t really ready to experience it, art connects with that part of ourselves. It helps it form and watches it grow.
When I came to the museum I knew exactly which direction to go. I followed many twists and turns knowing that at the end of the hall there would be a room lit by sunshine and in that room there would be a temple–an ancient place that helped introduced me to wonder. It is still there, and so is my wondering spirit.
Some Thoughts:
1. Just got network access back. Expect blogs to be back to the regular daily schedule. I’m dumping what I wrote over the last two days right now…