I believe in the sun even when it is not shining I believe in love even when there's no one there I believe in God even when he is silent Those are the words I remember from the song we used to sing in 8th grade Catholic school. They came from Anne Frank's diary, and all these years later, I still hear them in my head, I hear the tune, I hear the melody and the simple voices of children echoing a flicker of hope for humanity. They come to me in times of extreme stress. They come to me in times of anger, frustration and sadness. They come to me when I feel like I cannot go on. I think of Anne in that little room, hiding in fear for her life, a mere girl, and I think, if she can believe in the sun even when it is not shining, you surely have no excuse to give up now. If you are religious, which I am not (I consider myself spiritual) you might call it a prayer or a mantra. If you are a scientist, you might call it something else, something fancy that has to do with neurons and biology I never quite understood because that is not how my body works. And by the way, neither philosophical or practical approach alone will do you any good. Because we still do not fully know what happens to us when we die. We only have best guesses and beliefs. We still do not understand the way the brain works. The way blood vessels and nerve and bone connect to make the whole. We are limited humans, both blessed and cursed with those limitations. Einstein said there are two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. One is as if everything is. When I was pregnant, my ex (bless his heart) printed a black and white picture of that quote. The picture was a hand holding a premature baby. The baby did not even fill up the hand, and when I think all is hopeless, I look around me for miracles. My mother believed in miracles. She thought everything was a miracle, intervention from God, from the coincidental meeting of an old friend when she needed to hear the most needed of words to the way a stray cat showed up at her door. Angelo. She took him in, and he was ferocious, attacking your heels whenever you walked by. But it was a miracle, and I that's how I grew up. Slightly superstitious, I would guess you'd say, slightly in awe of how life works and sometimes, it even works in your favor. My mother, Anne Frank, Einstein...they gave me what I needed to get through in life. When I think of what they had in common, I think...what was it about them that allowed them to instill a positive message without trying to beat it into me? How did they get it through my thick teenage skull that I should not kill myself during my darkest days, that I should seek the help and meaning that is there but is not always apparent? How did I become resourceful and creative in my attempt to keep living? I was taught well, in this regard. Who were some other teachers? Mr. Naughten (sp), 9th grade (again Catholic school), where I learned about Thoreau and Emerson, the importance of learning to think independently, to think ethically, to take action, to even sit in a jail cell if I believed something was wrong. There was another teacher there. A former nun who taught us a course in morality (I see her face in my mind, but I cannot recall her name). But she didn't hit us over the head with Catholicism. She hit us over the head with ethics. Those were ethics I could live by - treat others with respect and dignity because we all deserve it. We are all miracles. I remember getting a D in history those years. I could not remember the names or the dates, so I kept flunking the tests. But I did remember Mr. Kuznetzov (sp) describing a movie scene, All's Quiet on the Western Front. Something about a butterfly landing on the soldier's helmet and when he reached up to touch it, he was shot dead. I told him later I was very upset about that. I was crying. I could not handle the image. He apologized. But that image, too, has stuck with me. How people who reach for gentleness, for beauty, for peace are too often senselessly killed, and they die young. My point is....everything and everyone is a teacher of some sort, whether we know it or not. And what we have to teach is important. You don't know the kind of impact you are having at the time, what people will hold on to, what they will let go, what they are capable of. I always go back to the words of Henry James. Act like what you do matters. It does. To all my teacher friends out there, keep hanging on. It's an absurdly hard job, dangerous and stressful, and it should not have to be. But you have the capacity to do great good. You have the capacity to give kids what they need - something to hold on to in the darkness of their most vulnerable years. Keep giving them hope and teach them that love always exists in the world. As Mr. Rogers said, there are always helpers. Don't show them every dark novel or poem about death and hammer home Hemingway and Plath's suicides, do not teach them they have to be depressed to write well or they have to endure pain in order to learn. The world will show them pain soon enough. It already has. Give them something to hold on to. Give them hope. And show them that love exists in the world. Show them how to find it. That is all. Creative Statement: Apologies for the paraphrased quotes, the misspellings, the redundancy, the word repetition. This post is not meant to be perfect. It's okay to not be perfect. If you want an illusion of perfect, dump this into ChatGPT. But dump your own damn work in there, not mine. I will not contribute to someone else's intellectual property without getting acknowledged and paid. Copyright 2024, Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, all rights reserved
Posted in Poetically Speaking
