An incredible moment of enlightenment occurred today.

As a teacher (a profession that has always been denigrated, yet I seem to love more every year), there’s certain concessions you must make (these can also be applicable to police and health care workers):

• Never mention your profession at a party, or in public, because you will be vilified and people will stop talking to you (I tend to tell people I sell sandwiches at construction sites)
• 99% of the time you will be shutting the door to your classroom and doing what works best for you and your students, but opening it 1% of the time for optics (demonstrating you are fully on board with whatever fad is passing through this year)
• You are represented by a union and people really… really… hate that
• People will project their ill experiences of education on you, which loops you back to point #1

All of this is made worse during negotiation time with new governments and expired contracts. As it stands in the province right now, negotiations collapsed and we have initiated rotating strike days.

Instead of being in the classroom and with the students, we are walking the picket line. To be blunt–it sucks.

Getting into the details of my thoughts about the current situation would require more than a simple blog post or sound byte to the person who asks, “What do you think of all this?”

However, one thing I’ve come to understand is there are many things outside of my control. To stress out and fume about those would just be spinning my wheels for no reason.

This is why the Serenity Prayer is the most beautiful prayer one can recite when life is overwhelming.

Today, as I was walking across the street and speaking with a colleague, a man honked his horn at us and stuck up his middle finger.

Not uncommon, and pretty tame considering the visceral comments people were yelling out their windows the previous strike day.

I looked at him right in the eyes and realized… he didn’t see me as a person.

He wasn’t looking at me as a guy with a family and friends, grills in the summer, watches movies with his spouse, volunteers with outreach programs and has the same joys and frustrations we all do.

No. I was one of those people to him.

So, I did him the courtesy of giving him a smile and a thumbs up because, hey, I too have a finger!

Boy, he got really mad at that response. He held his middle finger higher, as if I missed what message he was trying to give.

I started laughing because I’ve had people yell some racist comments towards me over the years:
“Nice nose, you Jew!”
“Go back to the desert you f—ng terrorist!”
“You f—ng Muslims make me sick!”
(The fact I’m a Catholic, born in Canada and raised in an Italian household would be lost on those people who I’m forced to conclude are nothing more than ignorant degenerates who need to go away)

With a history of that happening, this guy holding his middle finger higher and with a more fierce look on his face thinks that’s going to upset me?

I continued laughing, then held up both thumbs and mouthed for him to have a good day. My colleague also gave him a thumbs up, because-hey, he had fingers too!

I thought that would be the end of it.

Nope.

He actually did a U-Turn and spent the next five minutes driving up and down the (four-lane) street giving all of us the finger.

I couldn’t believe it.

My thumbs up and smile triggered someone enough to want to spend part of his morning giving the middle finger to all of us.

How much hate do you have in your heart?

How miserable of an existence do you live?

What is going on with you, really?

It made me realize you really can’t let people like that suck the joy out of your own life. The more you stew about it, the less time you have for what really matters.

I have a lot of joy in my day and to take any of those attacks as personal would be feeding the animosity of what is making that person’s life so miserable. I hope for their sake they can get over it.

In the meantime, I offer my sincerest smile and an enthusiastic two thumbs up.

I’ve been on the hunt, for several years, seeking a simple tool that will help resolve the messiness of my brain.

Let’s put aside the instant knee-jerk reaction of “Mindfulness!” and “Meditation!” as a cure-all solution. As a scholar of Religion and practitioner of its contemplation strand, I show a bit of (pretentious?) disdain for those who wish to strip those practices from their context and market it.

Sorry, it’s not that simple and I’m aiming for clarity of thought… and also remembering appointments, bills to pay, projects to finish, etc.

Anyway, it’s this hunt that led me to the cult of productivity.

The best advice still comes from my first foray into the subject while reading David Allen’s, Getting Things Done:

Get it out of your head.

Your brain sucks at remembering things and you need to get what’s in there, out. Allen developed a system that relied on writing everything down, collecting all relevant papers, and sorting it at the end. Each paper you touched was put into a system where you would deal with it.

The crux was using the system as it was intended so your mind can be free in knowing whatever was on it, will be dealt with. Brilliant.

Then the digital tools streamed in, followed by a massive cultural shift of mass communication dependent on the digital world. Suddenly, the likelihood of someone carrying paper and pen shrank significantly as we all put phones in our pocket.

It’s not a bad thing as digital offers convenience on a scale we’ve never been used to–each person gets their own personal assistant. However, digital tools have their limitations and aren’t all encompassing.

Each one promises to be that way (while making it simple, of course), but a system that can capture everything and deal with it in one place? That’s a no and it should be that way.

Our brains aren’t that simple. Give ourselves time to sit and think and our thoughts will race in many directions (and yes, please, I know about meditation, you don’t have to mention it again).

How do we capture those thoughts?

What if we want to elaborate on one?

The advantage of pen and paper is that paper can be anything. You can change the medium to your liking.

Make some index cards, have a sketch pad, bind a book, write a list, make an accounting sheet, whatever. It’s also tactile and visual, allowing you to spread a bunch of papers over a tabletop, or put a ton of index cards in a box to pull out as needed.

A digital tool is still limited by screen size with multiple screens being a solution, albeit a cumbersome one.

The fallacy people run into when trying to convince others of the “superiority” of paper is it can do all the above in a way digital can’t. However, the form in which paper takes varies according to what is needed. Every time you switch the type of paper you are using, it’s the equivalent of firing up another app.

However, this isn’t an either/or situation.

Our brains are complex and for years I’ve ignored the fact in the hopes of finding that one tool that will be my be-all-end-all solution. A tool with a built-in system that will solve all my needs.

Then I accepted that I’m a full-time working parent of a young family, who also writes and publishes in his non-existent free-time.

My daily life is complex and until things simplify (the kids leave and I retire… or so I’m told), I need a complex system to match, accompanied by an assortment of tools.

After several years, I think I got it now. It’s messy and I don’t recommend anybody replicate it, but it makes sense to me.

No single tool will be an instant fix, but many tools can be used together if you’re willing to work it out.

You can give a person is your time and attention.

The effort you put into paying attention to another, focusing on their words and actions (and also what they’re not saying or doing) will provide you with a framework of what they need. In a world hyper-focused on our own image, this comes as a refreshing change.

This is the difference between tremendous marketing and asinine efforts.

The difference between a leader and a task master.

The difference between trust and skepticism.

It’s all the difference in the world.

There are the words that come out of people’s mouth and then there are the actions that follow.

If the actions do not follow the words, we learn a great deal about those people truly stand for and what they actually believe.

Sometimes, their actions are so loud you cannot hear any of the words they are saying.

Scientists rely on repeated observations to formulate ideas about how the universe works. It’s the entire foundation of the scientific method.

If something can’t be replicated, it can’t be used.

Whatever you’re replicating is what people are learning about you.

My relationship with social media has been tenuous over the years.

I’ll work with it for a while, worry about its ability to fragment my attention (or pull away it completely) and leave it. During the leaving, there will be many self-assured moments where I’ll reference people who make do without any social media presence and are doing well.

However, I find myself boomeranging back in a small way.

Its ability to connect me with people all over the world, share ideas with those doing what I’m striving for and push me into new ideas is unmatched. Even with the mountain of reading I do, some of the insights I see in off-handed comments are uncanny.

It also helped with another realization–I’m not an island.

The things I want to do with my life and career have already been done, and are being done, by others. To think I have to embark on this alone is nothing more than pure ego.

The work still needs to get done and it’s still up to me to do it, but why wouldn’t I seek the extra support?

What’s going to make this time different (I hope) is the boundaries I put in place. My queries and my connections will be very specific and the time spent on the platforms will be minimal.

Of course, this is all precipitated on the assumption these platforms will even last.

If they fall apart, then I guess I go back to traditional forms of networking… ones that require actual effort.

My Internet went down on the weekend.

It started Friday night when my kids wanted to watch a show and we couldn’t. We only have one TV in the house and it’s hooked up to a Roku for streaming on the weekends.

For something we consider so imperative to today’s world, it wasn’t really an issue. Yes, I still have data on my phone, but it wasn’t even an item of interest.

When there’s no power in the house, things can get difficult: food can go bad in the fridge, lack of A/C in the summer (if you even have it), finding your way around at night is a trickier, etc.

When your car breaks down (or your mode of transportation isn’t functioning), life gets a bit more challenging.

Internet connection goes on hiatus for a few days?

What are you really missing?

Convenience. That’s about it.

Trusting yourself to the process and giving yourself permission to do what is necessary takes heart.

There’s a fear it will not be well received, well polished or reach everyone it needs to.

It can be stifling as our insecurities take over.

But the work is necessary.

It needs to get done.

And only you can do it.

The consequences increase exponentially.

For instance–no one likes failure, but experiencing it early and learning how to recover from it builds a resilience towards its effects. As a child, you may have to repeat a task, suffer a bad grade or deal with disappointment over a losing a competition, but you learn that life goes on and other opportunities will happen.

The longer one waits for this lesson, the harder the fall will be when it inevitably happens. In some cases, you even see a full withdraw from society.

Getting something you didn’t earn can lead to entitlement (this is happening with mark inflation in education), which leads to a system shock when things don’t magically go your way all the time… or ever.

Lack of responsibility can lead to never taking any, then spending a lifetime of blaming others rather than taking action.

Many of these lessons cycle back in our lives, but a strong foundation in place turns those moments into a stumble rather than a fall.

Let’s envision two scenarios:

One – For-profit tech companies mine every bit of data about students to create reactive education portals where students login and learn required curriculum.

Teachers are relegated to semi-autonomous robots who spend their days overseeing rooms full of students who need to submit work by hand, or monitoring students for cheating if writing exams.

Accountability is non-existent.

Creativity is no longer encouraged because algorithms cannot account for thinking outside of programmed norms.

What originally was sold as an adaptive model to each student morphs into a one-size-fits-all based on an ideal that few fit into.

There are constant interruptions because of information leaks and hacked accounts/servers.

Those who can, make the leap to homeschooling only to discover it’s flooded with marketing gimmicks and endless social media debates about what’s “best.”

There’s a surge in enrollment for private schools who are initially welcoming to the flood, only to find they are now in marketing wars with other private schools… and many new ones that opened to cash in on what’s happening. Again, endless debates about what’s “best” for students ensues.

Society drastically stratifies between those who are held accountable to their education and those who have given up on it.

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Two – Our education system is re-conceived from the ground up, transforming curriculum into an organic, evolving process that makes direct connections to the world outside the classroom.

Incentives move away from marks, or grades, and towards mastery of concepts and skills.

Teachers provide direct support to students, who are receiving an individualized experience. Both groups are excited to be there every day and both are learning alongside each other.

There is not just one teacher per classroom, but several teachers and guest presenters on a constant rotation to provide different approaches and viewpoints for the students.

Technology is leveraged where appropriate, creating a synergy with learning and teaching.

The stigma against certain paths are removed and specialized programs in the arts, tech and the trades are in place. Subjects themselves move away from fragmentation and move towards a blending of expectations. There’s an expectation of numeracy in English just as much as media analysis in Math.

Society upholds the investment of education and holds themselves accountable in ensuring all students have access to all learning opportunities, especially those in much less fortunate circumstances.

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If any of the above sounds familiar, it’s because this is already happening across North America. It’s not everything in one place, but there are many examples of each.

Where we end up depends on us.