Exploring the Gap

The other day, I wrote about education being about relationship rather than curriculum. Another way to talk about this is to use the conceptual tools of overt curriculum and hidden curriculum. The stated curriculum is the course content: the subject matter, the syllabus, and the facts and theories that the teacher expects the students to learn. The hidden curriculum points to the human learnings and assumptions that are conveyed in how the course is structured and taught, how the interactions between student and teacher take place, and everything else that happens in the class.

The hidden curriculum overwhelms the stated curriculum every day. One of our local luminaries, R.W. Emerson, put it this way: ‘What you are doing speaks so loud, I can’t hear a word you are saying.’ I can say that I expect everyone in my classroom to act with respect, but if I make arbitrary rules, treat individuals by different standards and don’t really listen, then that message is what communicates most directly.

In organizations, we can talk about the gap between mission statements and operations or between organizational policy and organizational culture. There is who we say we are and then there is the reality of who we are in our actions. One insightful commentator, when considering our attempts to re-envision and reform policing warned; ‘Culture eats policy for breakfast every morning.’ They meant that we can pass enlightened and transformative policies, but if the culture of the police (or any organization) does not change, very little will be different.

(Or ‘Change must come from within.’ which is what the New York City hotdog vendor reportedly said to the Dalai Lama when the Dalai Lama asked for change from a ten-dollar bill he gave the vendor when Dalai Lama asked: ‘Make me one with everything.’ )

This gap between espoused values and lived values is true in our personal lives as well. We often state clear and reasonable intentions and then are surprised that we are not able to follow through. I believe it’s very important for me to get regular vigorous exercise. I say this with what feels like full conviction. But if I look at my life, I see that this does not really appear to be true.

It turns out that it is extremely difficult to close the gap between what we intend and what we live. Author and activist Sister Helen Prejean said ‘I always watch what I do to see what I really believe.’  We say we are against racism and prejudice of any kind, but in a culture where we find racism embedded in the structures of the institutions that support our lives (like the police), do our actions really reflect what we feel in our hearts?

Thinking back to my experience in school, ostensibly, the learning was about math, history, English and the other subjects. But I knew that what was most important was obedience and conforming to teachers’ expectations. I was not consciously aware of this at the time, but I made sure to behave (mostly) and instinctively knew that being a ‘good boy’ was more important than learning.

Over the years, when I have been a guest lecturer on Zen and meditation at highly selective colleges around the area, I have found that many of the students (who did well in high school and on standardized tests) behaved like me. While I wanted them to look into their own experience and engage with the moment, they were carefully hiding themselves while trying to learn what I (and their teacher) expected them to learn. The hidden curriculum teaches habits that grow deep and usually operate beneath the level of our awareness.

I wonder too about the hidden teachings of the online learning that so many of our children have just been through. I know that some students were allowed to have their cameras on or off during classes to protect their privacy. One of the unintended learnings of this might be ‘I don’t really make a difference. I can have my camera off or on, no one knows (or cares) what I think, feel, or wonder.’ I’m sure this was not what any teacher intended, but just the structure of on-line learning might make this a likely and unfortunate outcome.

So how do we close the gap between what we say and what we do?

One way, as Sister Helen Prejean suggests, is to pay more attention to our actions than to our words. If someone watched your life for several days without being able to hear any of your words, what assumptions would they make about what is most important to you—about what you really believe? Does how you actually spend your time reflect what you care about most deeply?

Another entry point might be to pay attention to the attitude with which you do the little things. It’s not just the task itself (overt curriculum) that matters, but the care and presence we bring to it as we engage with it.

Another of our locals, H.D.Thoreau, put it this way: Why, then, should man hasten as if anything less than eternity were allotted for the least deed? Let him consume never so many aeons, so that he goes about the meanest task well, though it be but the paring of his nails.

So get the nail clipper out and have at it!

Not Multiple-Choice

Fortunately, this morning, all I have is a sore arm.

I got my second vaccine dose yesterday afternoon. After a negative COVID test in the morning, taken in precaution due to a slight fever, chills, and exhaustion of the evening before, I got better as the day went on, and, at the doctor’s recommendation, followed through with my 3:15 appointment at the CVS in Sturbridge, MA. I seem to have had my primary reaction prior to the second shot rather than after.

I wonder if this was some mystical heightened sensitivity, anxiety, or something else altogether? I love how the mind wants to know. We want a clear reason for everything that happens, so we create a list of possible culprits and then interrogate the whole gang, certain that one of the suspects must be guilty. But rather than singular and simple, the ‘answer’ is just as likely to be ‘all of the above’ or ‘some of the above’ or ‘none of the above.’

One of the tricks I learned that allowed me to do well in school (and on standardized testing), was that the likeliest answer provided was probably the one they were looking for. Beneath this conscious knowledge which allowed me to eliminate the answers it couldn’t be and then guess between what was left, thereby greatly improving my chances, was my unconscious awareness that tests are never about ‘the truth’ but rather about the expectation of the person designing the test. Doing well in school was not a matter of learning about the world or myself, but rather having a clear understanding of what each particular teacher wanted.

Since then, I’ve come to realize how relational education is in another way as well. The relationship between the student and the teacher is equally and perhaps more important than the content that is covered. Most all my teacher friends know this and have been struggling to maintain these relationships on-line over this past year. Real learning is not about memorizing facts (though I am a great believer in memorizing poems which I believe have a salutary effect on one’s general well-being and sense of appreciation of life). Real learning is allowing oneself to go beyond the security of one’s opinion into the unexplored and unsettling world that is just beyond. And venturing beyond what we know entails danger and loss.

We rarely talk about the personal costs of learning. In the mid-’90s Robert Evans wrote a wonderful book called The Human Side of School Change: Reform, Resistance, and the Real-Life Problems of Innovation in which he looked at the many factors in play when we are trying to create or encourage or even allow change. He writes specifically about educational organizations, but I think his insights apply equally to our internal efforts as well.

…the key factor in change is what it means to those who must implement it, and that its primary meanings encourage resistance: it provokes loss, challenges competence, creates confusion, and causes conflict.

I have long loved Evans’ writing about the often unspoken costs of change. His reflections seem equally true for learning as well. In learning, we lose the worldview that we had and therefore our sense of competence as an actor in that world. We are confused because the old rules and perspectives we had relied on are no longer applicable and this causes conflict as we work out new relationships and patterns of interaction.

Relationships and support from real people who can walk with us and reassure us as the world shape-shifts in our minds and around us are essential ingredients in learning and growth. Our job as parents and grandparents and friends of young people is not to tell them what we think they need to know, but to walk with them as they discover and rediscover the world around them. I suppose this equally applies to all the other human beings we encounter.

We can never know what someone else ‘needs’ to know. But we can be curious and supportive as they go through their many learnings. We can push back and challenge sometimes, but always with respect for the mysterious process of life unfolding in the form of each particular person. Life is not a multiple-choice test and my ‘answer’ is only one possible choice among the many that are allowed, encouraged, and celebrated by this vast and creative universe.

The Answer Isn’t So Simple

Precisely at five a.m. this morning, the birds begin to sing. Lying in the dark I hear them clearly though the windows are shut. I smile as I remember other mornings of other springs and I wonder what is on my mind this spring morning. It seems a simple inquiry, but it always takes me a while to come up with an answer beyond, ‘Not very much’. Fog and murkiness are a regular feature of my life.

I have a close friend who is irritated when they ask me a question and my response is silence. I try to explain that my quietness is actually a good-faith attempt to find an answer rather than an evasion or a dismissal. I love the British TV shows where the leading characters always say they are fine even when the suspected murderer has just held them hostage, blindfolded and tied to a chair for four days without food and water. A hoarse and weary, ‘I’m fine,’ accompanied by a faint smile is always their response to the question ‘How are you doing?’

Their thoroughly British friend immediately decodes the nuance of the answer, taking into account their recent near-death experience and noticing the trembling of the upper lip and the red-rimmed eyes. The good friend does not disagree with the statement that is clearly false, but rather offers a cup of tea and responds directly to the human truth of the situation as opposed to the verbal construction.

The fullness of any situation is far beyond whatever words we say. I used to think it was important to ‘talk things out’ and ‘get to the bottom’ of issues. I still believe in the power and necessity of words to help us go beyond our limited perspectives, but being close and being in relationship now appears to be a more mysterious and imprecise adventure than I had thought.

So I ask myself again, ‘How is it with you this morning?’ I now accept my slow response as information. All night I have been dreaming, both asleep and awake, of the satisfying solidity of the rectangular granite blocks I was working with yesterday. The terrace walls I am constructing to contain a new garden linger sweetly in my mind with their comforting repetition and variation of simple shape and muted color. Each roughly rectangular stone weighs between five to twenty pounds and I remember the satisfying thud each one makes as I drop it on the bare earth when I move it from place to place.

I once read that in making a wall, you should never pick up a stone twice. This may work for other longer walls with more skilled wall-makers, but I seem to be doing a lot of moving of rocks that don’t yet find their place in the wall. So I try to enjoy each stone I pick up as well as appreciate the warmth of the afternoon sun on my shoulders. I move granite blocks from place to place, finding the precise length and height and width for the next piece of wall. I am delighted by the heft and ancient provenance of these sparkling gray companions.

I make some neighborly ‘beautiful-afternoon-to-be-outside’ talk with a visitor in my neighbor’s backyard and he responds by telling me these granite blocks are cobblestones. That hadn’t occurred to me, but it seems likely enough. He claims to work for the largest distributor of these stones in New England and tells me they are imported from India where they have been cut by hand. With so much granite here in New England, I secretly hope this is not true. I don’t like the idea of their carbon footprint being so much larger than the stones themselves. But since I am repurposing them from former uses around the property, I am somewhat soothed.

Now I notice that I have successfully evaded my own question. Or perhaps the true answer to how I am this morning is: ‘Dreaming of the solidity of granite blocks.’ This morning they appear as the kindly mooring of my soul—a life-line to keep me happily tethered to this earthy world of dirt and rocks, of flowers and trees, of bird-songs and mental images. Each thing itself goes beyond murkiness and words to present the fullness of life as just this.

Only Two (or more) Right Ways

I started building a small terraced garden yesterday behind the south-side wall of the garage where I am starting to live. The ground slopes down gradually from east to west, about five feet over the twenty-foot run, but the siding on the wall steps down (and up) in three increments. I thought about just outlining a sloping garden there but then had the bright idea that it would look better to make some terraces that would repeat the steps of the siding (and hide more of the concrete).

When I begin a project, I rarely have a clear picture in mind of where I am going to end up. I used to envy people who seemed to know exactly what they are doing and where they are going. But then I realized that 1) most people actually don’t know what they are doing, even if they speak and act with great confidence, and 2) even the people who do know can end up quite wrong. I’ve had genuine experts offer various and contradictory opinions about the same problem.

When I studied Aikido, a Japanese martial art of self-defense, there were two Aikido Masters who taught the simplest and most basic move in diametrically opposed ways. The move, called tenkan, is a simple pivot and is usually practiced with the uke (attacker) grabbing the wrist of the nage (thrower) which is extended with the foot of the same side. (e.g. right hand and right foot forward) The nage then pivots on their front foot until they are side-by-side with the uke, all the time keeping their hand in front of their torso.

This simple move changes the relationship from face-to-face conflict to side-by-side collaboration, and if, as nage, you’ve kept your hand in front of your center, the uke is off-balance and you can easily extend forward and ‘throw’ your partner. (DISCLAIMER – do not try this with your partner at home as they may not be amused.) As an aspiring Aikido student, you do this over and over until your wrists get sore from the friction of being grabbed and then breaking free.

The disagreement between these two teachers was that one thought this simple move should be done with concentrated energy. He taught that, in doing this move, you should imagine energy flowing through your arm and out your fingers, extending this energy throughout the move. The other teacher taught that the key is looseness. He said not to focus on the hand but to keep everything in alignment during the move and allow the whole body to be relaxed and in a state of enjoyment.

Who was right? Each teacher was aware of and rather dismissive of the other’s position. Each would demonstrate the move in the ‘correct’ manner, then have a student try the other teacher’s method, which, of course, wouldn’t work at all. Physical reality seemed to shift depending on the views and teaching of the teacher.

At first, I was troubled by two masters directly disagreeing with each other and teaching contradictory techniques. But over the years, I have come to appreciate the creative and fungible aspect of reality. Not just Aikido Masters, but each of us participates in creating the world that in which we live. Our beliefs, assumptions, experiences, perceptions, thoughts, and actions all swirl together with everything we encounter to create what we call our ‘life’. It is (and we are) not a thing that can ever be fully described or understood. Any technique or teaching is only a provisional suggestion that may or may not apply to the current situation. You and I are ongoing processes that are constantly coming into being, maintaining, and falling away. Whatever worked yesterday may or may not work today.

But back to my intended terraced garden behind the garage. It’s 20% done and I’m now at the head-scratching place—stepping back considering proportions, available materials, and the myriad necessary decisions that were hidden from me in the vagueness of my good idea. I’m still hopeful that I can learn enough and be responsive as I go to create a simple terraced garden that rests easy with the garage wall behind it and brings a small portion of delight to me and others who may wander by.

The Peepers Call Out

Yesterday’s warm drizzle spread quietly into the sleeping earth and roused the cold blood of us all, including the tiny amphibians, the peeper frogs, who suddenly came alive and began singing for their lives. From puddles and vernal pools throughout the neighborhood, the males began their shrill chirping and whistling–enacting the ancient call of life for attention and sex.

I suppose the little frogs have no awareness of their purpose. The male frog does not think ‘I’ll call out especially fast and loud to attract a really hot babe so we can have sex and have a nice family of eight or nine hundred little ones who will be so cute and fun to play with.’ He calls out because he calls out. In his pure expression, there is no gap between intention and action. The calling, as well as the subsequent conjugal activity, serves life’s essential purpose that is unknown to the one who calls out.

On some level, for all our painful human self-consciousness, each one of us too lives by instinct and acts without knowledge. Current research shows that our awareness lags several milliseconds behind our actions. Like the little peepers, we act first, before we even know we have decided. It is then, a fraction later, that the thinking mind comes online and scrambles to figure out a ‘reason’ why I ‘decided’ to do that which I have already done.

Aside from the vast majority of our ‘thinking’ which happily trundles on beneath the level of our consciousness and beats our heart and breathes our breath and constantly maintains our precarious constantly moving exchange with the world we live in—aside from all this, most of our thinking is post hoc—it comes after the fact of our activity. Our thinking is simply our best guess as to why a certain feeling is arising or why I said or did what I just said or did. Its assertion of agency and authority is an elaborate (and often quite convincing) charade.

Mostly we’re like the eight-year-old boy who trips and falls, then quickly leaps up and looks around to see if anyone was watching. And if they were, he defiantly proclaims ‘I meant to do that.’ The ancient delusive claim of purpose and control. Though I spend a lot of time encouraging people to clarify their purpose and to act in alignment with whatever that deeper direction may be, in the end, I find life to be much more mysterious (and interesting) than that.

Our lives unfold through each action we take or don’t take. I have no idea why one day I get out and go for the brisk walk that I know is good for me and the next day hardly get out of the house. Why I have continued to meditate and lead Zen groups for the past thirty years is also a mystery to me. I can, of course, make up a thousand reasons and some of them feel true, but really, my life is simply what I have done.

I’m not advocating we let libido run wild and imitate the licentious behavior of this season’s cacophonous vernal pools. But maybe I am. Maybe I mean to say that we can appreciate the ten thousand joys and sorrows of our lives as part of a bigger movement of life, as not quite so personal and therefore not quite so fraught with regret and anxiety. Maybe we are not as separate as we think and we are all simply calling and responding to the ancient necessities of attention and reproduction. In that case, I’ll just follow what calls to me and sing as quickly and as loudly as I can and hope for the best.

(Excerpted from forthcoming book Wandering Close to Home: A Year of Zen Reflections, Consolations, and Reveries. September 1, 2024.)