Living Deliberately
When I was near the end of my time teaching writing at San José State, I had my students, Spartans all, memorize a paragraph from Thoreau’s Walden: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
To grade writing and hope for authenticity and life in the prose was proving to be a fool’s errand—mine—so I figured if I couldn’t do much to actually change the students’ writing and bring it to life, at least I could have them carry a little bit of another writer’s work inside of them so they could have something to pull out during Thanksgiving when a grandparent asked them what they were learning at school.
We leave breadcrumbs for ourselves and, later, maybe even decades later, we can look back and see in them clues of what our lives have been all about or clues of what we want our lives to be all about or clues of what our lives want us to be all about. Twenty years ago I was asking these students to memorize and recite a primal belief and fear that lived in my heart: I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I knew what it was like to be in college, hoping for something, some form of greatness in myself, and getting caught up in the dailiness of anxiety over grades and friends and what to wear and what to eat and the question of who even am I. The thing about getting caught in the dailiness of the daily is that it becomes a way of life, and then it becomes life, and then you die having lost the part about living deliberately and living a life that felt like yours.
It was fun listening to the students recite whatever sections they had managed to memorize. There was pride in the room, excitement, fear, for when you fail to recite the whole paragraph but fail with the knowledge that you can do better next time if you try, growth energy happens, and growth energy turns fear into excitement. Writing an “A” essay in a place that had set parameters for what “A” work was felt out of reach for many of these students—often because they simply did not have time in their busy work/school lives to dedicate hours a day to homework—but the memorizing was something achievable, a piece of paper they could carry in their pocket while walking to class, while driving, while riding the bus, and even though they could have thrown it off as stupid and a waste of time, most of them took up the challenge like a batter at the plate, and they did their best, and, in the trying, in the showing up, they hit it out of the park.
Later, I would get fired from Foothill College for throwing a dry erase pen at a student—or, since I generally can’t throw at a target and hit it at any distance longer than three inches, in the direction of a student. I’d been throwing things for years at SJSU. I did not know it was assault and battery. I thought it was a game called, Wake up. I am not a TV. Participate! Participate! Look alive! Care! Express the wild beating heart of yourself! Drop out if you hate school this much! Why are you here if you don’t want to know how to write a conclusion because you think you are just supposed to repeat the introduction to close your essay, and what I want to tell you is you didn’t leave home to go to college only to return after four years as the same person. I didn’t read your essay only to get to the end and hear, yet again, what you said in the beginning. I could have just read the introduction and used the rest of the time to focus on something that was actually alive!
I am writing all of this to convince myself to drive to the beach and jump in the water. I have made this a daily practice because I love how awake and alive I feel after even just a minute or two in the ocean. Today it is cold and grey outside, and part of me wants to stay warm. Part of me wants to stay just as I am.
But here’s the thing: I’ve never jumped in the water and thought that was a waste of time. I always think, I feel better. I feel more awake to me and to the world.
I’ve heard the talk of all the support Thoreau had that goes unmentioned in Walden. Others helped build the house on land owned by his friend Emerson; others helped with food and laundry. When the weather was too cold, Thoreau could run home to his family home in Concord. And. Still. Self-reliance is not all it’s cracked up to be anyway. We have a world that is crying out for humanity to wake up and help others. But to live deliberately? To front only the essential facts of life? Would a thing like Amazon exist if we were to live by those tenets? Would we be a world of floating yachts and starving babies?
I don’t know. What I do know is that jumping into the ocean and waking myself up so I can continue to focus on what needs to happen for adopted people to feel free feels like a thing I want to do.
For the record, if I could go back in time to that day at Foothill College when the kid in the back row who couldn’t write a conclusion to save his life was talking to a friend no matter how many times I called to him, I’d throw the pen again.
Only this time I’d aim better.
