I’ve prided myself in teaching my students the value of working toward being a strong moral person. I once heard someone say, “All you have is your word, and your word is your honor.” There is no substitute for wisdom and, as I’ve aged, I’ve learned that’s true.
I once worked at an affluent school and this value of “your word” was a tough lesson to teach – especially considering that powerful people who had risen through the system taught their children a contrary idea. We debated ideas like why “the end does not justify the means,” and coming in first isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when your brother or sister suffers and your success was built on their backs.
These were nice intellectual exercises, but when faced with doing right and needing to look at an insane world that posed antithetical views, it’s hard to work through right and wrong. Young women don’t understand that there was a time in my lifetime where women needed to get a husband’s signature to use a credit card. Women couldn’t own a mortgage. And although they make up half the world’s population, they are still under-represented in Congress and places of government and corporate board rooms and some still don’t make the equivalent of a male colleague. We still have never had a female president.
I was born during a Civil Rights Movement and the fight for the passage of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) that remains unratified to this day. The young women I taught had mothers who worked in powerful positions and had broken through glass ceilings and the iron clad doors of male dominated corporate board rooms.
This is not to say that I frowned on success. On the contrary, I supported students to use their natural gifts to excel as far as they could and “shoot for the stars” to change this world. I encouraged each student to never forget where they came from and to support others, never look back and to keep paying forward their blessings and more blessings would follow. I helped each student seek out abundance and unabashedly preached the “gospel of wealth” that comes from opening the spigot of grace within and recognizing the power of positive thinking that Norman Vincent Peale inspired millions to see.
I never wanted my students who came from affluence to feel guilty about wealth while others were struggling. I was careful when pointing fingers of blame at corporations when I knew there were good people making difficult choices for the good of family and their corporate responsibility that came with running a company. I always looked for moral people to say, “See, here is a good person who is in a position of power, who knows the value of service and is using his position for good to better the lives of others.”
For the most part, those individuals came through, but in a few cases, because we’re all human, some of those people, even activists, showed the warts of frailty that were revealed in their character and led to public disgrace. Win some, lose some. “C’ est la vie.” We are all moving toward becoming better than we were yesterday and it is a process, and I haven’t met too many people who have cornered the market on being Jesus or the Buddha.
It was hard for me to teach people that what we own cannot insulate us from the world. With the exception of a few, for the most part life’s rich pageant always rewarded and there was no illustration of loss of fortunes in their lives.
I remember a situation in 2008. A student who lived in Malibu whose father was a mult-millionaire experienced a harsh reality that altered her perspective forever. It was during the recession and her father lost his business for one reason or other. A fire then raged through the mountains and engulfed her home leaving all they owned to cinders. Because her mother’s wealth was based on non-liquid assets and the turnaround time to liquidate them was 90 days, the family struggled and relied on other family members to help them through this bump in the road.
This student saw the fleeting nature of wealth and how it could be lost overnight. She awoke to the hard reality of poverty and the wretched entanglements of judgement that come from those who are superficial in their assessment of one’s value based on what they own. There are those who kick people when they’re down and she had a front row seat at the showing.
This student learned all too quickly, the power of meditation and prayer to endure the hardest of times. “Wherever you go there you are.” Her strong character, her steadfast determination, self-awareness, and mindful attitude helped her arrive at a place of safety and security. Her savvy and smarts taught her she could rebuild her life and know that she had a lifetime of opportunity to do it. She would never take for granted how life could change in a day and to treasure this day for what it is and the people who carry us through our struggles or hold us up on a daily basis.
When I saw the charred remains of Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood I frequented when I lived in LA, I was stunned silent. I watched reports on tv, and could identify the homes I would pass on Sunset Blvd going for a coffee or watching a polo match and visiting Will Rogers State Park. I felt helpless as the fires continued to rage, and the posts started popping up on facebook asking for prayers. I saw “Go Fund Me” accounts being initiated and students sharing how their childhood places that held sanctified memories were gone.
I’m now at a school where students come from humble means. I’ve encountered circumstances where students grapple with violence in their neighborhoods and early deaths of family and friends, where boarded up establishments are the norm not the exception, where the need is great and we occasionally learn after the fact that a student has been living in the sub-zero temperatures in a car, and putting on a strong face so as not to be called out by other students and be bullied due to their misfortune.
Who do I help? How do I help? What do I have to offer when I am nearing retirement and making ends meet. All I have is who I am.
Like my former students, I’ve learned that the need is great and sometimes all I have to offer is a shoulder to cry on. I can’t fix anyone’s problems. I can’t wave a wand and bless others with financial fortunes, but I can be present to the pain and suffering another is feeling.
One of the most important lessons I taught was for my students to own their own suffering and to be present to the suffering of others no matter who they were. A rich woman suffering from depression in Beverly Hills is as important to alleviate as a child’s suffering from hunger in Africa.
The need is great in helping others financially, but the need is even greater in alleviating the suffering you see in others. I would venture to say the costs of helping others through presence is the cost of salvation.
“Always be kind.” It’s cliché, you never know the battle one is trying to conquer. A good word, a hand on the shoulder to let that person know you are there is invaluable. Check your ego at the door and meet whoever you meet with a mindful intention of goodness.
All we have is who we are. You may think the person on the street with his hand outstretched has nothing to offer you, but the hand you offer in return may be the only extension of compassion and hope for the day — you can’t put a price on that.
spirit beat 