What is it a person tries to communicate from foreign spaces – I once sent a friend writing on the same problem the recommendation of Rilke’s voice, full of homelessness and spirit, and I have recently taken myself back to him, but I cannot take my mind further than his Spanish dancer or Eurydices – the woman’s dance like a burning match struck in the dark, and the wholeness of a woman who has seen her grave.
Am I so homeless?
I feel a restless wandering in me, but something so deeply rooted that I need to call it home. Do I act from this space? How can I truly bring about change?
I think of all the good people I know, making tangible change, and I recall a lesson – recalled in the brightness of day – that the only truly important task for man to undertake and ensure in tangible results is that he gives love, loves humanity, loves the human, every day. All else are just means to serving this goal.
Teaching. Purchasing food. Conversation. Discussion on tragedy. The only measure I can truly use against myself is how I expressed this singular, important love –
I recognize this to be a somewhat dangerous confession. Should I not be focused on tangible results, data, improving individual student progress – after all, I am their teacher, not their psychologist or mother.
And of course this is nonsense. I’m an excellent teacher, and getting better every day. The capability of human beings to bear many focuses at once, and to truly achieve these goals astounds me and I more fully realize each day.
Whether a student with 10% sight navigating and exceling in a business-school environment, a man actively and consciously fighting alcoholism, or a mother battling depression and working abroad – well. I can say the human being is a remarkable beast, entirely deserving of love.
And this is the goal. This is what we communicate, regardless of language, border, or culture. It does not tire.
Education Ordo Amoris 