One of the Best Questions I've Been Asked

Just like 20,000-30,000 others of the biking brethren, my excitement grows this time of year. In less than a week I'll join them on the highways and back roads of Iowa to pedal the days away, periodically stopping to gorge ourselves on Farm Boys breakfast burritos and pie and pork chops and good times. July is RAGBRAI month, and I'm ready to go.

This time of year, it is nearly impossible to be on a bike ride or even standing near your bike and not get asked the question, "Are you going on RAGBRAI?" Now that I can answer in the affirmative, I love getting asked that question. Saying yes means being in on something big, something newsworthy, something scores of towns are preparing for as I write. 

I heard a question I like even better the other day, though. 

Last Thursday I rode my bike from Nora Springs into Mason City to go meet with my group that is studying Biblical exposition. Naturally, seeing the bike led to a discussion of my upcoming participation in the festivities.

My enthusiasm led to being asked a question that I've now come to believe is one of the most important questions we can ask others in our lives, regardless of the topic. My fellow student softly, inquisitively asked, "So what's so great about it?"

After remembering that exchange (during the solitary hours of a bike ride, I might add), I realized the power in that simple question. By asking me that, this guy was inviting me to talk about something I loved. He was asking to hear me get excited, to describe experiences that I cherish, to bask in the memories and emotions of something on which I spend a great deal of time and energy. Frankly, it was an invitation for me to feel good about something that was important to me because it was an opportunity to share it. It's a brilliant question.

There was nothing for him to gain by asking it. He isn't going on RAGBRAI. I doubt he ever will. He didn't ask hoping for his mind to be changed about it or to get information for himself. The question was completely and totally asked for my benefit. And I now realize just how rare of a question that is.

Asking that question of our spouses, our siblings, our neighbors, and our coworkers I believe can transform those relationships. And even if it doesn't, asking it will at the very least transform that day for the person who gets to talk about what you asked about. What's so great about gardening? About soccer? About urban chickens? Or if I'm asking my students, what's so great about the game Clash of Clans? 

There is a more common form of this question that gets asked all the time. The words are the same, but the tone is different. Incredulity drowns the question, offering mockery rather than excitement. Asking, "What's so great about it?" in this way seeks to belittle and to justify not being interested in it, not getting caught up in it, not wasting your time on it. The question asked this way is for the benefit of the questioner, not the one being questioned.

Instead, find somebody this week to offer that question to. Then listen. Stand there, smiling, and let them talk. Resist the urge to jump into their dialogue with your own, "That reminds exactly of when I . . ." comment. There will be another time for that. I promise. This time, this question is just for them. 

If you want to surround yourself with positive, exciting people each day at work, if you want to spark some passion out of your spouse, if you want to reconnect with an old friend or begin a connection with a a new one, start asking the right questions. This one is sure to produce results.

Never Enough

An recent article about teaching from the Huffington Post discusses what the author feels is the hardest part about the profession that no one ever mentions. Writes author Peter Greene:

The hard part of teaching is coming to grips with this:

There is never enough.

There is never enough time. There are never enough resources. There is never enough you.

As a teacher, you can see what a perfect job in your classroom would look like. You know all the assignments you should be giving. You know all the feedback you should be providing your students. You know all the individual crafting that should provide for each individual's instruction. You know all the material you should be covering. You know all the ways in which, when the teachable moment emerges (unannounced as always), you can greet it with a smile and drop everything to make it grow and blossom.

You know all this, but you can also do the math. 110 papers about the view of death in American Romantic writing times 15 minutes to respond with thoughtful written comments equals -- wait! what?! That CAN'T be right! Plus quizzes to assess where we are in the grammar unit in order to design a new remedial unit before we craft the final test on that unit (five minutes each to grade). And that was before Chris made that comment about Poe that offered us a perfect chance to talk about the gothic influences, and then Alex and Pat started a great discussion of gothic influences today. And I know that if my students are really going to get good at writing, they should be composing something at least once a week. And if I am going to prepare my students for life in the real world, I need to have one of my own to be credible.

And the result? A perpetual reality dominated by this:

But every day is still educational triage. You will pick and choose your battles, and you will always be at best bothered, at worst haunted, by the things you know you should have done but didn't.

My first reaction to the article was an easy and comfortable agreement. It's not a begrudging or a "woe-is-me!" emphatic head-bobbing to secure my martyrdom; rather, it's a simple fact of the profession that I and others face every day. If you're not wondering what else you should be doing, you're probably not doing it right.

With a little time to think, however, I realized teachers should be careful to see themselves in an exclusive category when it comes to performing in this "triage" environment.

Most parents feel this every day. Blessed to be home with my children all day during the summer, I find the extra time produces more expectations and guilt, not less. I want my daughters to learn how to play and use their imagination outside of an officially scheduled program run by some saintly librarian, art teacher, or myself; they need their space to play. Then I worry I'm not spending enough direct contact hours, down on my hands and knees, getting dirty with them. There are scores of summer writing and math and reading worksheets that should be done, hundreds of books, and art projects galore. But shouldn't they be outside, grass-stained and streaked with sidewalk-chalk dust? We need to work on bike riding, on swimming, on socializing in the neighborhood. At some point they need to pick up their trail of destruction, maintain some semblance of hygiene, and learn to be a responsible, contributing member of the household team. And don't forget Candyland. Because I am home, I decide what we will do and what we won't. And the benefit of the responsibility comes with the burden of always leaving something out.

The same is true in my personal life. What do I cut to fit the rest in? Exercise? Reading? Friends? General household chores? Walking the dog? Whatever good activity I choose to engage in, I'm also choosing not to engage in a different good thing. It all should be done; it can't all be done.

No matter how much I write or work on the craft of writing, I feel behind. The house is clean, in places, but never totally and completely. The yard looks good, but not perfect. I called this friend, but haven't contacted that one in months. And wasn't I going to paint the porch this summer?

This feeling seems universal probably because it is. You and I will never be enough. For anything. For try as we might, there will never be enough hours, enough energy, enough will, or enough goodness. Good intentions? Yes. We have plenty of those. But we are not God.

And that's the point. We should feel like we can't do it, because it's true. It reveals our great dependence. I've always had a feeling, or perhaps a hope, that the day would arrive when I finally "got there." Where, I don't know, but the destination would include finally having figured it all out - prayer, parenting, proper fitness, professional glory and accomplishment, personal fulfillment, and the perfect family led by a father and husband with all the right answers. That day will never come.

My choice, therefore, is to see God in all that I do, and rest in the knowledge that I belong to Him who is all-sufficient; or I can try to do it all, be all, accomplish all, for me and by me, never ever being quite enough.

For you and for me, teachers and non-teachers, parents and non-parents, we most likely will share some daily form of what Greene describes in the article. Expect it, work hard in it, and then accept it. You are not enough on your own. And you weren't created to be.

In the Watches of the Night

I am not an easy bedfellow.

When my mind is not at ease, I rage in my struggle to fall asleep. The concerns of the day (real and imagined) grip me. Trying to shake them, I roll from my right shoulder to my left, then flat on my back, then back to my right. I creep closer to my wife, hoping her slumber is contagious; I turn away, attempting to change my luck once again.

If sleep does finally overtake me, it isn't long before my anxieties interrupt once more. I then get into full battle mode, cursing audibly the sleeplessness, punching my pillows into submission, rearranging, yanking the covers up, then off, fueling anxiety with anger, commanding my disobedient wretch of a brain to just fall asleep already.

I suppose the thoughts keeping me awake are not unlike those that keep you awake: uncertainty about the future, mistakes I've made through the day, anger, disappointment. Reliving all of game day was another common trigger for me. For whatever reason, these thoughts have a way of establishing a stronghold in my consciousness in the long hours of the night. And if I do luck into falling asleep in the midst of these, they are ready to enter my heart once again as soon as the alarm announces a new day. Typically, the negative has staying (and waking) power.

In the middle of a long spring of many sleepless nights strung together, I came across this from Psalm 63:

     My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
     and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
     when I remember you upon my bed,
     and meditate on you in the watches of the night (v. 5-6)

Rather than being kept awake by the earthly, the temporary, and the unpredictable, here is an offering to find satisfaction and joy by instead remembering the Source of all hope and goodness.

When I mess up, lose control, and say or do something that I regret, I can lie on my bed obsessed with the sin or the Forgiver of Sins. Angry over perceived wrongs, I can stay disappointed over flawed humanity or count on the One with a flawless track record since the beginning of time. I can be afraid of the temporal or comforted by the Eternal.

It doesn't seem like such a hard choice.

Oh God, may I remember You and meditate on you in the watches of the night.