Am I Who They Think I Am?

I was watching on television either the national political campaigners or the Olympic synchronized swimmers.  I forget which, although both were pretty funny.  Both made a lot of splashes, were upside down most of the time, and, despite their efforts, did not get very far in the pool. My mind drifted and I wondered if I was wise.  How does one know if one is wise?  Centuries ago young people considered “elders” with deforming arthritis in their knuckles to be wise because to get that condition they had lived to the ripe old age of forty.  Socrates, during his Apology (defense at his trial) claimed he was the wisest man he knew.  His reasoning was thus:  Socrates sought out the most learned men he knew and questioned them.  He came to the conclusion that he was the wisest man because, unlike the “experts,” who claimed to know, he knew that he did not know.  Socrates’ tactic was, through dialogue, to reduce his “expert” to ignorance or “aporia.”  This was a good thing because through admitting ignorance, thus unchained by social biases, scholars can begin the search for truth. There is a koan in Zen Buddhism, “Who were you before your parents named you?”  This is usually interpreted as “who are you, your identity, before your culture, your time and place, infused you with its belief systems, values, and mores?”   Unfortunately for Socrates, his wisdom did not mitigate his sentence.

I know that I do not know a great deal, unlike when I was twenty-one when I knew everything—I thought I knew why people behaved the way they did, what was right and what was wrong, the meaning of life, what was the meaning of the Beatle song, “I Am the Walrus,” and how to stretch Hamburger Helper with filler during the lean years. So am I wiser now because I have more questions than answers?  Has my Parkinson’s slowed me down, including putting my perspective in first gear so that I see things more clearly?  I am not certain.  I do know that I fret less about things.  My college roommate’s mantra was, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”  I try not to.

There is a lot of small stuff out there.  One piece of small stuff I don’t fret about is how people perceive me.  Teaching taught me that.  The ancient Greeks (who considered themselves quite modern, mind you.  Millennia hence will we be considered ancient Americans, or ancient reality show watchers, or ancient internet surfers?) believed that every person had two faces—the face they knew and the public face or how people saw them (sometimes referred to as the “daemon”)  Early in my teaching career I erroneously thought I controlled the image I projected as a teacher.  I was the nice genial fellow who was there to help them navigate the waters of intellectual curiosity, and, well, learn things.  I worked hard at developing that image.  Through a great deal of effort I created what I hoped were engaging learning activities, struggled to  be just and fair in my small domain, and I tried to demonstrate my genuine care for their well-being.

Then there strode into my classroom one September the lad who thought I was not that person I thought I was.  The class filed in, some nodding greeting, some nervously seeking the last seats, others flashing mini-smiles on that first day. Grumio entered slowly with a glare spread across his visage and, all the time that he took to corral the last seat in the middle row, that glare was directed at me.  That look of anger and possibly hatred was quite disconcerting.  As I introduced the opening day festivities, expectations and goals, I found myself repeatedly returning to Grumio who never once took his eyes off me.  How could anyone dislike me so much on the first day of school?  Was my reputation that bad?

This dueling eye contact continued for a couple of weeks until I called Grumio’s counselor and asked her to find out what was going on.  Ray called me into her office the following week.

“I called Grumio into my office and asked him about you.”

“And?”
“He does hate you…vehemently.”

“Hate me?  Why?”
“We didn’t get that far.  Want me to transfer him?”

“No.”  I was never into transferring problems.  “But see if you can find a reason.”

For the next month I taught Grumio’s class with my back to the blackboard, writing on it without removing my eyes from Grumio.  My penmanship was bad enough but writing behind my head resulted in total illegibility.  Aware of his hatred, I went out of my way to make every test and essay appraisal more than favorable to Grumio and my politeness to him increased exponentially.  Still that awful set of dagger eyes put me on edge.

Finally Ray called me down to her office.

“Well, I found out why Grumio hates you…he thinks you are Mexican.”

“I am not Mexican.”

“But he thinks you are.”

“What’s he got against Mexicans?” Why pick on any race, especially one with a rich cultural history?

“Who knows with kids?  Or with adults for that matter.  Maybe his great great grandfather was at the Alamo or some Mexican girl with taste wouldn’t dance with him or maybe he once ate a bad taco.  Who the hell knows?”

Now I was provided with an ethical dilemma.  Do I not tell Grumio that I am NOT Mexican and continue to be the object of his seething hate, or do I get myself off the hook by telling him I was not a Mexican and thus tacitly be complicit in his hatred of an entire culture?  Do I teach the remaining of the school year as his “bigotee” or do I join his clanship as fellow bigot? I opted for the former and continued to use my chalk with my back to the blackboard.

Sometime later in the school year, from some unknown source, Grumio discovered that my ancestry was not Mexican.  His eyes softened somewhat, but he never exhibited any warmth or congeniality towards me.  I tried to talk with him several times, but there are some rivers that cannot be bridged.  My failure to communicate with Grumio and to help him eradicate his bigotry and seething hatred was one failure which still haunts me.

The lesson I learned from that experience was that I could set an example of proper behavior for my students, but I could not control how they saw me.  How they saw me was almost totally dependent on what they invested in me.  To some I was the helpful and caring loco parentis, to some the authority figure, to some the hated father or the good fatherly cop there to protect them from bullies, to some the only person between them and four years partying at a flaky college at their parents’ expense.  Still others saw me as a societal failure from the first day of school—usually this attitude was learned from parents who judged all humans by the number of things they owned. “I mean, what can this schmuck holding a piece of chalk pulling in only forty thousand a year teach me?  If he had any talent or brains he would be CEO like my dad of a company that makes tuxedos for dogs and other crap.”  One of my educational goals was to acquaint my students with certain realities such as the fact that education/intelligence and wealth do not automatically go hand in hand. As my father told me repeatedly, give a million bucks to a gorilla and all you have is a rich gorilla.  Look around you.  I rest my case.

So I sit in front of the television or peruse the newspaper at the breakfast table and chuckle at the tremendous effort and energy human beings expend to project their public image, their equivalent of the Greek daemon.  Cosmetics are a multi-billion dollar industry as is fashion design and hair styling and all the other ingredients of our public clothing display…all to create that daemon, that public image.  Consider the money poured into shaping voters’ images of candidates all to control how the people see them, ignoring the fact that people see what they need to invest in that candidate.  The candidate is a chameleon colored by the voter’s dreams.  The truth about the candidate—what he or she has really done or said is irrelevant.  If I want the candidate to be my hero or heroine, then no amount of reality will change that.   In fact, the more bad things ascribed to my candidate, the stronger I defend my choice, clinging to what I want to believe.  Studies have demonstrated that the adherence to an idea, no matter how stupid or irrational the concept, is directly proportional to how many people believe it.   In other words, if I am running for office, I go for the numbers, and outrageous and stupid pronouncements only get me more air time (free) and thus more voters.  If I can plug into their imagined fears, I have a good chance. Democracy going back to the ancient Greek’s version was built on the belief that voters could put aside what they wanted to see in a candidate and made their decision on what was really there.   I wish Grumio had done that.  Human nature, however…. The Stage Manager from Thornton’s Wilder’s play, Our Town, says in the cemetery overlooking the fictional Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, “Wherever you go near the human race, there are layers and layers of nonsense.”

So am I wise?  I think the trick to being wise is, like Socrates, to admitting to having more questions than answers, to wonder at the immenseness of the universe and to marvel at the mysteries of life.  Shouting to the world that one is wise does not convince people it is true.  Even Socrates saying politely that he was the wisest man did not save his life.  No.  I think wisdom has to be conferred upon one rather than simply claimed…a concept political candidates should observe.  As the poet Rumi said, “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”  At least I am more relaxed, not sweating the small stuff.  How people see me is what they want to see.  I’ve got nothing to do with it.  Whew!  That’s a relief.  Think I’ll go out in the backyard and watch the trees gently swaying in the summer breeze.