Overwhelmed
I'm kind of overwhelmed by the world, right now.
The needs of the kids I work with can be a bit much. Their behavior, their judgment, their often very low reading and reasoning abilities, their need for adults who stick by them even as it means a lot of energy on my part and confusion and frustration on their part, not to mention sacraficing other more respected and lucrative opportunities for my life. It's hard to keep up, sometimes.
And the world I am preparing them for is seriously fucked up in so many ways. And it misunderstands them and we misunderstand one another as often as we understand.
The world is a mess, is the truth. And kids look out into it and see that, no matter our protestations. And they get overwhelmed with it, generally with much less understanding than me or most adults. And they often screw up. And we often treat them like we treat everyone. Like shit.
And sometimes it gets a little overwhelming.
After awhile, it is so overwhelming, it very much feels like the efforts are useless. I am so often cleaning up after the messes of other adults - in the kids' lives, in school, in the political and legal world, - and it never seems possible to keep up with all of it.
The bottom line around most of it is that people are often assholes who just can't find it in themselves to take responsibility for their asshole behavior. And so that fact of existence, from the beginning of human history, has been used to rationalize people being bigger assholes to somehow compensate for the asshole behavior of their neighbors.
It's a dizzying cycle of stupidity and ugliness.
And I'm basically a janitor for humanity's refusal to face up to the bullshit and the failures that come with this outlook on life.
But, sometimes, the messes are just much bigger than anything I can keep up with. And when people are busy making bigger messes and pretending that those messes are not their fault, it sometimes outstrips my capacity to do fix the situation.
Sometimes I just want to have a quiet life with a wife and children and with friends and family and just stop looking out for others, all the time, and have a life to myself that is not consumed with the overwhelming needs of others, especially kids who have no clue how difficult it is likely to get once they leave school.
Sometimes its too much. And I need a life where I'm not constantly facing a barage of needs that I cannot always keep up with.
We could fix that situation for teachers. We could fund enough teachers and schools who could care for the needs of students. But to do so would necessitate us moving away from the self-righteous and intrusive grandstanding of politics and to seek funding and opportunities outside of the perhaps, but not quite, irredeemably dysfunctional world of power and politics. It would necessitate people of good faith thinking far outside the very narrow and nasty box of contemporary politics and building schools that attend to the judgments of teachers and parents who are more intimately knowledgable of kids and their needs and much less attention to politicians who have very little direct understanding of kids and schools.
But to do so will need for people to give up on the false faith that we can ask Congress to simply mandate improvements and that they will come. They won't. And that false faith comes at far too enormous a cost for kids, teachers, schools, and liberal education.
It is our most dangerous tendency and it is, appropriately, the most deadly sin.
Pride.
And the pride that our repressive and regressive impulses to force the world to shape up do more good than they really do, which is often not much, in the short term, and, worse, that they make matters worse, in the long term, is the most serious problem that humanity faces at this moment.
And, sometimes, all that pride and its consequences are a bit much for me.
It is in moments, like these, when I could use a friend and a partner who I could seek out a little comfort and understanding from.
Because God knows I could use it, right now.
I want to leave this whole mess and do something less demanding.
But doing so, I know, involves leaving these kids to their own devices in a world that treats them and everyone like cattle, too often, rather than like human beings, with consciences and judgment and a need to cultivate both with a rigorous and liberal education.
Most people denigrate the need for education and deeper understanding of the world, right now, when other more base desires seem so easily and abundantly satisfied.
And perhaps the world just needs teachers as a reminder of a commitment that is more honest when baser concerns dominate peoples' attention for all of the reasons that baser concerns have always dominated peoples' attention.
That's what I value in my teachers, anyway. In a world that would seem much less honest and grounded were it not for them and their more honest, if less lucrative and self-centered, commitments.
I just wish they and I could and would live up to those liberal and democratic ideals more honestly than we do or allow ourselves or are allowed. I just wish the hypocrisies and compromises of liberal democratic peoples was not constantly a source of excuse for the abuses of less liberally and democratically commmitted peoples everywhere.
All I know is that it overwhelms me, at times, and that I cannot always know what is the best means of living those values.
Maybe I just need a break. Maybe we all do. Maybe we all just need to cut each other more slack than we forever seem to fail to do for fear of appearing weak when we offer up compassion and understanding. Maybe we all just need a lot more slack. Because how we are handling things now is definitely not doing the trick, unless we are forever going to lie to ourselves about the success or not of our efforts.
Surely honest, decent, free peoples can do better than that.
Because, if not, the doomsayers are given the self-fulfilling prophecy that they so desperately covet to try to prove the one thing they value more than anything else: being right, even when they are so clearly wrong.
And that fact of life will never change as long as honest, decent, and free peoples are constantly trying to prove what thugs they can be if only given the chance.
Surely we can do better than that. Surely our better angels are not found in the clothing of gangsters, terrorists, and despots. Surely we have something better to offer.
All I know is that hope is better placed than any assurance that it is not possible. Because that assurance is not honesty. It is us giving up and resigning ourselves. And no amount of resignation and cynicism will ever make life better, for us and our children.
No matter how overwhelmed I might feel at the moment.
