Unwillingness. by Patresa Hartman

It is 10:08 on Saturday night, and I must confess that I am having difficulty with gratitude. It isn't that I cannot identify things that are ridiculously blessed in my life -- so many. There are so many. My rational self can fill at least twelve grocery lists of them.

I am not in Mumbai.
I was not trampled at Walmart on Black Friday.
I was not shot at Toys R Us.
I am employed.
And so is my husband.
I am not a migrant worker from Mexico sent home empty-handed for the holidays because of this country's recession.
I am not an AIDS patient in Indonesia about to be microchipped like a kitten.

(These, of course, are recent news stories gleaned from the local paper.)

I am having a hard time pinpointing genuine, overwhelming gratitude at the moment, because I am tired. And I have a lot to do. And I have been eating poorly and sleeping poorly, and my body feels yucky.

I know there is a difference between clicking down a list of obligatory and sensible things for which to be grateful, and really and truly breathing in that gratitude and filling your entire soul cavity with it. I want to be grateful for the hard stuff. I want gratitude to be a lifestyle instead of a rational acknowledgement that things could always be worse. That's just too easy.

But right now my eyes are droopy and I am a little bit cranky. I am tired of my responsibilities and want to sleep for at least 3 weeks. Mine are such petty complaints, I can barely stand myself.

And so, I am going to be grateful for that.

I am going to be grateful for my pettiness, for my occasional bouts of self-loathing, for my oblivion and stubbornness and unwillingness. I am going to be grateful for my bad thought habits and my selfishness, my irritability and my laziness. I am going to be grateful for them, because they create light and shadow. I am going to be grateful for them, because they emphasize the fact that I have permission to be flawed. I am free to be every version of myself.

I am grateful for the liberty to be tired.

3 Dimensions. by Patresa Hartman

I teach at a community college. The way I teach (or try to teach) is certainly infused with the way I be (or try to be), yet still I am the flattest version of myself in the classroom. My 3-D soul splats onto a paper-defined role called INSTRUCTOR and it never feels fully honest.

I do not know what happens in my sleep to make it so, but some days I wake up hyper-attuned to the space I occupy and the reflection I cast. I walk with a keen sense that who I am is foreign to how I seem. Few things make this clearer than standing in front of a group of 20 and then another group of 20 and then another group of 20 and then one more. The dynamics of me change with the dynamics of them.

I am at my best when the job description of INSTRUCTOR is large and amorphous -- when my job title becomes second to my human-ness. I am most grateful for my students who move with me, who grant me wide space to be: forgetful and disorganized, silly and a bad storyteller, disjointed and perplexed. I am their teacher, and I must do my job; I am also soul in flesh, and I must be imperfect.

I have some pretty terrific students this semester and am grateful for their willingness to recognize and embrace all 3 of my dimensions (which I mean in the most unpornographic way). Everything works better when we all agree to be flawed. We laugh together and problem solve more collaboratively. A micro-community establishes, and we are mutually supportive of our overlapping learning curves. With all channels open, we grow.

It doesn't always happen so. It is not universal, this understanding that a teacher exists outside the classroom and does not breathe for the sole purpose of providing a student "credit." The vibe of the room changes when we staple each other to pre-determined roles, narrowly defined. It feels tense and stifling, sometimes even hostile. It is easy to disrespect someone when you don't think they actually exist.

Those are challenging semesters and challenging classes. I fight the urge to hide and constantly question my competence. I slip into resentment and frustration, feeling forced to play a part that doesn't suit me. "Do they not understand that I am a person and not a robot?" I take things too personally. It is exhausting.

But the universe is kind and generous. Just as my confidence shakes, time nudges me forward. A new group of students enter, and they open the door wide -- an invitation to bumble and be ridiculous. There is nothing like the permission to be foolish that makes me feel more true.