Slipping on the Faculty Room Floor

A handful of years back, I stepped into the faculty room kitchen to put my lunch in the fridge. One foot onto the tile and I slipped and fell flat on my back.

After fearfully looking around to see if anyone saw me fall (funny how this was my first concern 🤦‍♂️), I then got up to check out the reason I fell. There was a puddle made of water and coffee at the entrance to the room that someone before me didn’t clean up. So I enjoyed a few moments of anger and frustration.

Then I took a breath, shrugged, and cleaned up the mess.

If the person who made the mess had noticed and cleaned it up, I wouldn’t have slipped. But they didn’t. And of course I would’ve been justified if I didn’t clean it up - I didn’t even make the mess!

Regardless of what came before, now that I had cleaned it up, people after me wouldn’t slip.

That’s what being an adult makes possible - being responsible both for our experience and for leaving the world better off.

Being responsible not as an obligation, but as an opportunity.

An opportunity to mend, to heal, to fix, and to give. An opportunity to feel, to enjoy, to consider, and to grow.

An opportunity to use our broadened perspectives, our facility with language, our capacity for compassion and generosity and forgiveness.

An opportunity to love unconditionally.

The radical responsibility available to adults can certainly be viewed as a burden - that’s why we often expend so much energy blaming others and justifying it.

But radical responsibility can also be seen as an opportunity - an opportunity to experience well-being and to be agents in fostering the well-being of others.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

“You are not responsible for the programming you picked up in childhood. However, as an adult, you are 100% responsible for fixing it.” - Ken Keyes

Hiding My Vulnerabilities

During lunch with colleagues last week, I self-righteously shared an “I told them so!” about my last job. "See! They were blind all along!"

And I didn’t feel good afterward - something was off, and I felt shame rise up.

So I went next door to speak with a colleague about it. I knew I was covering something up with that self-righteousness, and I knew the truth would come out if I started to own it with someone else.

I use self-righteousness to hide vulnerability. With just a few of my former colleagues, I didn’t feel heard, respected, or trusted. Some part of me did and still does wonder what’s wrong with me that I wasn’t seen in a positive light, and I still fear that my experience with them was because I’m just “not enough” as a person.

And I really want that to be their fault and not mine, so I get loud and self-righteous!

It’s a really good thing that we try to hide our vulnerabilities! Doing so has been a crucial part of our survival over the millennia. The problem, though, is that covering it up doesn’t make it go away, it just hides it - the vulnerability is still there, and I’m not as free when my actions and being are stuck trying to cover it up.

So it’s really fine to want to cover that vulnerability up, it's just not usually necessary. In fact, my relationships deepen when I'm willing to share those vulnerabilities.

I now know that whenever I’m feeling self-righteous about my old job, that vulnerability (“Maybe I’m just not good enough?”) is right there behind it.

For me:

• self-righteousness has underlying insecurity and fear

• anger has underlying insecurity and fear

• anxiety has underlying insecurity and fear

• arrogance has underlying insecurity and fear

• embarrassment has underlying insecurity and fear

• addictive behavior has underlying insecurity and fear

Knowing this doesn't mean that those emotions are bad or wrong, but it does encourage me to consider where my actions and being are coming from. The insecurity and fear are nearly always phantoms, and there's usually nothing to actually be afraid of.

You know what doesn’t have underlying insecurity and fear?

• Compassion

• Presence of mind

• Intentionality

• Relaxed well-being

• Creativity

• Love

Maybe this is hyperbole, but I think that what underlies all of our selfish and negative emotions is a desire to be safe, heard, acknowledged, appreciated, and loved. And perhaps we’re scared that we’re just not worthy of any of that.

This is true for me at least.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

The Fertile Soil of Respect

Last week during my 9th grade science class I had a student say, “Mr. Scott, you hate me.”

This is a kid I often invite back into our class discussions, invite back into doing his classwork, remind to get to class on time, and remind to pull up his mask. Sometimes I do this softly and kindly, other times I do it theatrically.

I’ve been trying different techniques to get this student more engaged in class - he says he likes the class a lot, and I can tell, but I also want him to be more engaged with the material. No matter what, though, I’m going to respect who he is regardless of how he behaves in class.

As the adult in the room, I took responsibility for his experience that I hated him. I reflected on why he might’ve felt that way. I could see that how I interacted with him could easily have been interpreted as my not liking him - I was certainly nagging him. As we humans do, he was probably just misinterpreting my passion and energy and taking it personally, so I would likely need to alter my actions in a way that was more digestible to him.

(Here’s another example of that in the classroom, though I really was being a jerk that time!)

So later I said to him, one-on-one, “You said something that I want to discuss. You know what that is?”

He said, “Yeah, Mr. Scott, and I know you don’t hate me. I’m just having a hard time focusing today."

It’s so so so easy to misinterpret others, and I’m grateful that this student didn’t actually misinterpret me. With these simple two sentences, he reminded me of the power of trust in a conversation: when we trust another, we trust that their intentions are positive, trust that there’s caring and compassion behind the communication, and trust that we’re in this together and not against each other.

The most effective way I’ve found to have students trust me is for me to respect and honor them and their individuality, their intelligence, their need to enjoy life. Respecting them takes presence of mind and being more interested in who they are than in who I want them to be. It also takes intentionality and managing my own reactions and emotions.

Whether it's noticed or not, respect is worth giving all on its own. When I respect the sanctity of my students' being, it's a gift I give both them and myself. From that fertile soil of respect is grown love, trust, generosity, and a good time.

And just so we're clear, respect does not mean permissive.

By the way, I find that respecting the sanctity of another relies on self-respect, self-trust, and a willingness to be responsible.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️