Freight Train (A Permutation of the TEDx Talk)

I was honored to be able to give a TEDx talk at the first ever Littleton area event this past Sunday.  I drafted and re-drafted that speech a number of times, all with the same theme but decidedly different tones.  I like this one, but I figured it was better on the page than on the stage:

Freight Train

On May 8, recognition of my own mortality came barreling at me like a freight train with the word “Malignant” emblazoned on the side in angry letters. The name of my actual disease, synovial sarcoma, was a subtext, difficult to read and understand, overshadowed by phrases like “poor prognosis with metastases” and “1 in a million.”

In those first weeks, that train thundered incessantly along the dark, curving tracks of my mind, a clicking, clacking, constant reminder of this thing inside of me that was trying very hard to make my time finite.

It bore heavy cars filled with responsibility, regret, and the weight of lost moments: these cars were my son, my partner, my family, my school. Each one was painful to look into, but there was one, especially, that confounded me, and it was the one filled with Expectations.

.

This car shined ominously with All The Things You Were Supposed To Do. All of the Dreams Others Have Entrusted To You. The World You Were Supposed to Change.

That car, with all of those Expectations, started filling up when I was quite young. When I would jump on my adolescent soap box and preach for gay rights and gender equality, animal welfare or the arts in schools, opportunities for kids to stay drug free, there was always someone- my parents, a teacher, an administrator, saying, “Go ahead. Give it a try! You can do it!”  Never once in my young life did an adult tell me that I couldn’t change the world. You see, if you are told something often enough, you begin to believe it.

Every one of those people had taken a wish, a sparkling, hopeful, beautiful thing, and handed it to me. So many of them expected “Big Things” of me, their wishes filled with grand expectations, fancy job titles, aspirations that were bigger than I thought this little town could hold. And there they sat, in the depths of that car, waiting to be fulfilled.  

For years, I felt guilty that I had chosen to become “just a teacher.” Deep inside it felt like I was letting down all of these people who had expected such Big Things of me. Teachers don’t become president of the Ford Foundation or win MacArthur Fellowships. But I had no desire to join committees just to step up the political ladder so I could be Secretary of Education, or to publish articles that are simply a restating of something someone else wrote 20 years before.

But I thought I had time, decades of time, to teach, to work with students, and then, maybe when my son had gone off to college, when I was ready to retire from the trenches, maybe then I would be able to do those nebulous “Big Things” that were expected of me. Maybe later I would be able to make their wishes for me and the the world come true.

But now, something else was driving that train, telling me that I might not have that kind of time.

And then, on May 26, 42 of my students changed the world with an act of kindness. It wasn’t about money, or about me, but about showing the world that there is good to be had in abundance. And literally millions of people heard them.

By June, a month after my diagnosis, and a week after our story went viral, the train finally started to slow down.  I looked back, and that car, so ominously filled with unmet Expectations, was replaced by the 42 students from Profile’s class of 2015. Behind them, I saw the nearly 1000 faces that I have known and taught in some capacity, including that very first group of World Changers from 15 years ago, and in all of them, I saw the most beautiful things:

I saw eyes opened up to the possibility of being the first person in their family to go to college.

I saw passion sparked by reading the first book ever, in their whole lives, as a freshman in high school.

I saw hearts and souls poured out onto countless pages, edited and reworked, published.

I saw young people who had been so lost, found.

I saw engineers, teachers, nurses, parents, artists, carpenters, loggers, clergy, non-conformists, activists, soldiers, athletes.

I saw people being elected to public office. Traveling the world to make peace. Solving the crises of developing nations.

I saw hundred of tears, but thousands of hugs.

Nowhere did I see a number, a test score, or a face without a story.

And saw THEIR wishes.

I saw World Changers. And I saw the world change.

And stretching back behind that car were all of the other teachers who had come before me and the ones that I’ve worked alongside.

I saw people from our communities, waiting to welcome those young people and share with them their wishes and dreams.

I saw the connections, handshakes between a brilliant student and a member of the community who was willing to take them under their wing.

And then farther back still, thousands upon thousands of strangers whose lives had been touched by the 42, and others by the rest of the one thousand.

What I hadn’t realized until that moment was that those Expectations had become my Wish, and that wish was made of all of the wishes that had come before me, stardust forming dreams, back and back, through time immemorial, through everyone who had come before me, taught me, and loved me.  And that to every one of those thousand young people, I had given them a piece of my wish, and thus the wishes of everyone before me. A legacy...

That they feel heard. That they feel they belong That they know they mean something.

That they know world holds amazing things for them, whether they choose to go away or stay right here.

That THEY could change the world.

And now, all of those people, 42, a thousand, millions, now hold a little piece of my wish.

They don’t need to know my name, but through my students, they hold a piece of my heart. And they hold a piece of all of those wishes that came first to help me make mine.

The train has slowed enough for me to see it clearly now, to jump back on and enjoy the ride. And that car filled with Expectations? All of those wishes and hopes for the world that were given to me? I have shared those hopes with a thousand young, eager minds. Minds that will astonish you with their capacity to take those hopes, make them their own, and run with them. To do good.

Because that’s what teachers do: They take a wish for the world and they wrap it up in punctuation marks and quadratic formulas, chemical equations and maps of the world, and they gently pass it, or they lob it and run, or they hide it for a student to find later, but they find a way to pass it on.

If I had been one person, on a quest for fame or power with a fancy titled job, those Expectations would have rested with me. But instead, I chose a passion, a vocation, that has blessed me with the chance to share them with countless capable hearts.

I have realized in this that I simply may not be meant for Big Things with fancy titles. That I may never have been meant to work for Bill Gates or be president of the NEA. No one is going to miss the book I didn’t write or the committee I didn’t chair. But the world would miss those 1000 students with their dreams. I know I would.