The Promise of a New Year: Thoughts for the Road
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
I love finales, riffling around the cavernous carton of the past months’ learning and then packing it up again, hands on the box, backpack over the shoulder, looking for the exit. At that moment, we are both complete and empty, directionless yet full of paths of possibilities.
January is college’s epilogue - drawstrings pulled tight over the previous year’s experiences, issuing an invitation to try anew.
As the Spring semester opens, one question hovers above me, “What will my students teach me today?” A great beginning lined with promise. For the truth is teaching and learning traverse the same highway, traveling back and forth across discovery as we forge new connections, question earlier assumptions, and filter ideas through past understandings, keeping what nourishes us and dispensing what no longer serves our ideals.
If I won the lottery today, I would still show up to teach tomorrow. It is the greatest of privileges to learn beside people with the fortitude to still climb the wall, a disposition so many of us abandon as the years of experience close in.
As an education professor, in most of my classes, a thruway assignment is to read books of your choice and write in your journal, which I refer to as a daybook, in ways that support the journey, whether it be reflections, devotionals, poetry, flash fiction, drawings, or a myriad of other genres that help steady who you are while tempting you to outgrow yourself.
Early in the semester, one suggestion, for there are no required prompts, is to identify guiding lights or thoughts for the road that, when shared out with others, may lessen the load or inspire.
As a co-learner in the classroom, I partake in most of my assignments. Though ever-changing and full of contradictions, here are five lights guiding my way today:
1-Create a Family
Some students arrive on campus flush with family cell phone numbers, steadying support only a few digits away, while others carry heavy sacks of personal and financial responsibility, with no lifelines on speed dial, leaving them alone to navigate complex troubles. College, however, offers the promise of an ad-hoc family - friends and professors ready to lift you over the creek swell. So don’t be afraid to take off your jacket and show some vulnerability. It is a true act of courage to ask for what you need and willingly accept the kindness of others. Inside that space, you will surely give of yourself too, opening yourself up to reciprocal relationships that may have eluded your earlier years.
2. Seek Out Freudenfreude
The media often spotlights schadenfreude, or the phenomenon of taking pleasure in another’s pain, leaving us wondering if a high-alert existence is necessary in order to watch our backs. However, experiencing joy over the accomplishments of others, or freudenfreude, is surely just as prevalent. So seek out folks who offer high fives with abundance and limit your exposure to those who push you into a box and create whisper networks in the shadows.
3. Spend Time in Spaces that Make You Stretch
We grow to the size of the rooms we spend our days in. Surround yourself with the keepers of uniformity, and you will surely shrink. Push back the walls instead and notice who encourages the reconstruction. Grab onto these co-builders and together make something that has never been seen before.
4. Set Markers, Not Goals
Goals are finite. Upon their arrival, you are invited to stop. But you are infinite. So instead, set markers and placements along the path to celebrate your accomplishments while encouraging you to keep going. Your potential is boundless, so there is no need to establish a goalpost you surely have the capacity to blow past.
5. Meaning Transcends Happiness
Often, people profess the desire for happiness; however, such an emotional state is fleeting and often dependent on outside people and circumstances. Meaning, on the other hand, keeps its formidable shape despite the darkness, for its promise lives not inside elation but upon the path of substance and impact. So create a life that matters, and your pockets will surely be lined with an abundance of spirit and joy.
Now, it’s your turn. Share your thoughts for road …
Two Read
This week I read:
The Good Neighborhood by Theresa Anne Fowler
“A story of race, class, region and, yes, tragic love...the result is Shakespearean." ―NPR
Greenlight by Matthew McConaughey
“It shouldn’t surprise you that this book is good, but it will surprise you just how good it is. Wise and entertaining, this is an inspiring memoir and how-to from one of the great outlaw philosophers and artists of our time.”—Ryan Holiday, author of The Daily Stoic
Participate in the Study
As a researcher, one of my current Narrative Inquiry studies invites targets of workplace abuse to share the story of how they were bullied and reflect on how that experience impacted their sense of belonging to their work community and their sense of belonging to themselves. If you would like to participate anonymously in this study, please click this LINK. I have my university’s IRB approval to do this work.
Reach Out With Questions and Ideas
I love hearing from readers, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to say hello, ask questions, or suggest topics for me to write about next ~ dorothysuskind@gmail.com.