Getting Along with the Whole: Forest and Warrior


In this week’s essay, I wanted to draw a comparison between our lives and a natural ecosystem. I hoped to offer reminders that we exist in conjunction with a host of other people and things.

In the book I’m currently working on, Dear Warriors, I’m diving deeper into this analogy. Marlene’s photo and my thoughts in this essay were among the initial inspirations that I’ve looked to. The term “warrior” has been used a lot recently to describe people with type 1 diabetes, which is the target audience for my new work. I’m exploring the definition of “warrior”, which can have an extremely violent and hostile connotation today. I’m convinced we can reclaim the meaning of “warrior” to describe all people and in a completely different way: hard-working, team-oriented, resourceful and creative-thinking.  The “noble warrior” or “spiritual warrior” dealing with general hardship and strife, as it were. I’m equally convinced we can also compare ourselves to trees, as in this shot.

Why? Warriors and trees both do better when they exist together with others. As a tribe or as a forest, we are stronger together.


As I wrote in this essay, we’re also richer. The forest is a complex environment with many facets. Certainly, there are conflicts. However, there is also bounty. Plants and animals have been known to live in active harmony because each species benefits. There is a flow within a forest.


Who and what are your forest friends and warrior allies?


Best wishes to you this week! As an educator. As a warrior. As a beautiful tree in an amazing forest. Picture yourself there. Who and what are your forest friends and warrior allies? You’ve got this! :-)


P.S. Today, I watched an extremely moving TED talk by Sally Kohn, called What We Can Do About the Culture of Hate. To me, hate is the opposite of the harmony of which I referenced here. I watched this presentation with that in mind, and it worked for me. As Ms. Kohn’s profile indicates, she “searches for common ground among political foes by focusing on the compassion and humanity in everyone.” Foes- warriors. Common ground- forest floor. Am I stretching this connection a bit?



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The End

Image
I’m going to roll the last two essays of Dear Teachers into one reflection and close this first year’s journey off. It’s the end. Or, an end. In Week 39, I wrote of the importance in seeing those tiny good things in life: life’s sweetnesses. Ends make them stand out more. There has been a ton of vitriol on social media this week. Perhaps not new, but the education community has been sucked into this phenomenon as well. Earnest people have been burned. Stances have been challenged. Flames have been fanned. You know the whole routine. Between these behaviors and my own personal struggles, I’ve been in an odd place wondering about what we (I) are doing. Then, I had a short, but surprisingly deep conversation with a clerk at a store. It really moved me. I found myself genuinely thanking him and wishing him well as we finished our business. I honestly felt a tiny moment of sweetness there that captured that wholeness and togetherness of which I’ve spoken of throughout this book
Read more

Rising Higher and Higher

Image
This week, I’m including the full essay from my book, Dear Teachers . In addition, I’m going to share a link to a beautifully written blog entry from a teacher I’ve met on Twitter, which I believe resonates with it. It’s Julia E. Torres’s An Open Heart , which talks of the need of being both true and there for all our students. The picture I used this week wasn’t the normal nature scenes. It’s a balloon, whose pattern reminded me of rainbows and seagulls, flapping across the sky. The word choices I made were influenced by BTS’s  Outro: Wings , a powerful song about hope, belief, and  the need to support each other. All my April essays focus on really seeing what is . Especially now, we may be too exhausted to see either our or our students’ progress. We may be disheartened by personal or larger-scale setbacks and feel swamped by negativity. But if we find time to look, we’ll see our balloons are still rising and we can make changes to help them rise further. There’s hop
Read more

The Heart Within

Image
I just finished writing a big essay on my main blog, called Spring and the Death of Denial . It was in response to a fantastic conversation on a philosophical radio program called On Being. Now, I’m hopping back into Dear Teachers , and am struck by how this week’s essay, the last of the April focus on what’s really there, connects to that. When we don’t want people to see who and what we really are, we throw up defenses. When we don’t trust the people that surround us, we again build barriers. Within those walls, we are one thing. Outside of those walls, we are something else. To grow, we first have to admit the walls exist within all of us. They come from our families and traditions. From our own pasts. From our own needs. From our own fears. In this week’s essay, the image from Marlene that I chose was a close-up of a lily in full bloom. The center of that flower is bright yellow, while the outer edges are a deep red, trimmed in that same golden hue. We don’t get t
Read more