Oh hey!
I get stuck in the weeds sometimes.
I really, really like to know things, have my shit together, and be mentally and emotionally unimpeachable so that everything I do is perfect. (Haha yes it’s working super well, thank you for asking!!!) Sometimes I convince myself that “listening and learning” is action, or at least will result in action, that will change the world. Perhaps this is sometimes you, too?
But it’s not action unless we…act on it. Hence, this newsletter, which keeps me accountable to
- Learn in public so my learning doesn’t wander off into the weeds; and
- Keep big FOR WHAT energy.
That second one is going to be a mantra for this site. It's inspired by teenagers, GOD BLESS THEM.
In my twenties, I taught high-school English. (I looked like a fifteen-year-old, so I constantly got stopped and asked for my hall pass. To address this, I bought prescription-free tortoiseshell glasses from Claire’s; then I looked like a fifteen-year-old in cheap plastic eyewear. Professionalism!)
Sometimes, as my students worked in groups on a project, I’d call them up individually to talk privately at my desk about something or another. If you know any teenagers, you might know that they’re, perhaps, less inclined than the average person to grant a request. Sometimes my “Hey, would you come here for a moment so I can chat with you?” would be met with “sure!”—but just as often, I’d get an eyeroll, a “whyuhhhhh?” or—soon my personal favorite—“for what?”
At first, I heard “for what?” as “why?” and I’d repeat the clause from my question: uh, so I can chat with you. But it kept happening, and that answer didn’t really seem to satisfy anyone.
It bugged me. I’d think about it at night; I’d think about it in the morning as I paired my Claire’s glasses with an extremely adult black turtleneck sweater. What was “for what?”
My students weren’t asking why I wanted to talk with them; they assumed I had my reasons. And I had good rapport with most of them; they weren’t being rude. Often, they were already on their way as they asked—squeezing out of those dumb high school desks, or striding across the room, beneath the huge “SO WHAT?” sign I had cut out of foam core and strung from the ceiling. I’d hung it there to remind myself that everything I taught had better have utility (whether economic or emotional or intellectual), and to remind my students to hold me to that standard.
“FOR WHAT?” was simply another version of that question.
So what? To what end? What comes out of this, after it? What the hell are we doing here, actually? I have a lot on my mind, a lot on my plate, and I get the sense that you’re about to add something else. What will that something-else serve? How will it matter? If you’re about to talk to me about some dumbass little assignment I missed, this conversation is a genuine waste of time and energy. I don’t actually automatically believe that everything happening in this building is worthwhile. What will come of this? For. What.?
I learned a ton from my students, and this particular lesson I think about all the time.
Learning and believing the “right” things are not in themselves transformation. I grew up in a religious tradition that prized right belief over good action, insisting that our job was to assent to a list of intellectual truths; any real change was up to God. Mighty suspicious, this, in a faith that also gave us the gem “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Learn in order to be transformed. Learn in order to transform.
For what? For transformation.
It’s this relationship among learning, contemplation, and action that the brilliant teacher and activist Paulo Freire was talking about when he defined praxis: “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it”.
That’s what I want for us. That’s what I commit to here: learning and reflection for transformation—of ourselves, of one another, of the world. Sitting at the Table for good conversation and sustenance and understanding, before we squeeze out of our chairs and stride into the world, asking—like those wise, wise, infuriatingly wise teenagers—For What?
Action this week: Ask for what? What are you going to do with what you learn?
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