Gamblers All
sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think,
I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside
remembering all the times you've felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena once more.
you are on the freeway threading through traffic now, moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful and so disappointing because we are all so alike and so different.
you find the turn-off, drive through the most dangerous part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and out through your shoes.
it's been a tough fight worth fighting as we all drive along betting on another day.
-Charles Bukowski
I make my way into the classroom, hoping to do some work before the class begins. Expecting to find an empty room, I am greeted with the faces of several students who have arrived early, very early, their noses pressed to their books. I sit at the desk, correcting papers or editing a presentation or recording a grade. Work I did not get around to doing amidst the chaos of another week of life. Engrossed in my own overwhelm, out of the corner of my eye, I notice her standing there.
“Can I talk to you?” she starts, timidly. There are many of them. Men and women who have returned to school after a lifetime away, committed to beginning anew. Hoping to find a way to give back.
“Just a minute,” I say and I finish what I am doing and turn my chair to look into a pair of eyes that have seen more of life than I can ever imagine.
I pull up to the shelter having driven like a lunatic down the freeway, straight from another freshman football game. I had to pull myself away in the fourth quarter. I wanted to sit there with all the other moms and dads and brothers and sisters and grandmas and grandpas until the bitter end. I wanted to sit there in the cold afternoon sunshine until the seconds ticked off the clock. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… but I have to leave. They are waiting for me.
“You’re late,” she says, only half smiling. She has been sitting in the lobby for ½ hour, waiting for me to arrive for our weekly writing group. She wants to talk.
There is a story. There is always a story. Sickness, death, divorce, addiction, incarceration, unemployment, homelessness, financial ruin.
There was a time when I was judgmental. I was young and naïve and had a basketful of opinions based on a thimbleful of life experience. I was raised in the suburbs. Went to college. Found work. Got married. Had kids. Stayed healthy. Life was good.
You only know what you know.
And then, over time, that thimble gets a little bigger. You meet someone and they tell you their story. With wide eyes you hear about the cancer that has ravaged their body or the addiction that has stolen their child. You sit with the mother of a young, once vibrant, 24 year-old as she stands by helplessly and watches her child lose her battle with AIDS and you wonder how she goes on. You wonder how she gets up in the morning and keeps going. You wonder… and you are amazed.
But somehow she does. Somehow they all do. They go on. They move into the shelter and get a new job. They go to Alcoholics Anonymous and begin the journey to get sober. They register for school and begin to attend classes they never thought they could take and even though they still have problems, even though they still struggle, even though they still don’t have enough money to pay their bills or a home to call their own or a family to support them, they still keep going.
I am in awe of their courage. I am amazed at their strength. I am encouraged by their ability to get up each day and start again.
Over time, that thimble becomes a teacup and then a soup bowl and then a big, cast iron, dutch oven and pretty soon experiences begin to flow over the sides, spilling out onto the counter and onto the floor of life’s kitchen.
Over time I have become a little less judgmental. A little more compassionate. A little more understanding.
Over time, the teacher has become the student.
Image from here.