Here's what I came up with:
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“I wish
there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left
them.”
These are
the wise words of Andy Bernard from The Office. Andy knows what he’s talking about: not only is he one
of the top salesmen at Dunder Mifflin; he’s also a Cornell man. Almost every
character on The Office is meant to
be a target of the audience’s ridicule, and about 95% of their supposed wisdom
is patently ridiculous. Here, though, I think Andy is on to something.
As human
beings, we have a tendency to romanticize both the past and the future, while
simultaneously neglecting the present. We can’t help it; it’s just how we’re
wired.
When I was
in sixth grade, I used to come home from school every day to watch my favorite
t.v. show, Saved by the Bell. I
watched part of an episode again recently, and it turns out it’s actually a
very silly show. At the time, though, I couldn’t get enough. The show follows
high school student Zack Morris and his group of friends: Kelly, Slater, Jesse,
Lisa and Screech. I enjoyed it, I guess, because it was funny and silly and
satisfying, and because Zack was a lovable rogue, whom you couldn’t help but
root for. But mostly, I think I enjoyed it because it seemed like a preview of
coming attractions; to my twelve-year-old self, Saved by the Bell might as well have been a documentary about high
school life. I watched with a great excitement, hoping that one day I too would
go to prom. Or hang out with friends at the local diner (just like The Max,
where everyone hung out in the show). Or start my own cool band (just like Zack
and the gang’s group Zack Attack, best known for their smash hit “Friends Forever”).
High school
turned out to be ok, though quite different from Bayside High as it was
depicted on the show. Saved by the Bell
actually left out a quite a bit. The constant insecurity of wondering who my
real friends were. The panic that no one would invite me to go anywhere on the weekends.
And the tedium of a fifty-five minute chemistry class. By my sophomore year, I was already
starting to daydream about college. Once I got there, I wouldn’t have to check in
with my parents all the time. I could play video games deep into the night. If
I was so inclined, I could even be free to buy myself a box of Frosted Flakes
(which – I swear to God – my mother considered just about equivalent to buying hard
drugs).
To be sure,
I enjoyed college a great deal once I finally got there. I really loved it for the first two and a half years or so. But in
time, I felt I had outgrown the tiny campus in the middle of nowhere. I spent
basically my entire senior year wishing I was elsewhere. Gambier, Ohio had
become stifling and I couldn’t wait to move to the big city, to meet new
people, and to live a more cosmopolitan life.
Now, there’s
nothing necessarily wrong with looking forward to the next step in life. And we
probably wouldn’t be able to refrain from doing so even if we tried. But I do
know that I’ve run into trouble in the past when I’ve taken the current stage
of my life for granted, and when I’ve assumed that the next stage in my life would be the best one. That kind of delusion –
“I’ll be happy once I get to high school.” “I’ll be happy once I get to
college.” “I’ll be happy once I get to the real world.” – can be a dangerous
way of thinking. Because it’s been my experience that each stage in life comes
with its own wonderful parts and crappy parts. If you’re looking for a Golden
Era of your life, where everything goes your way, you’re probably not going to
find it.
I think I
spend as much time romanticizing the past as I do the future – my own past, sure,
but also different eras in history. 2019 seems so bland sometimes. It carries
with it none of the romance and glamor associated with, say, the 1920’s. I
think about the Roaring 20’s a lot, specifically about my favorite authors, F.
Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, living in Paris, writing for hours,
strolling the Champs Elysee, and drinking wine at trendy cafes. It’s such a far
cry from my own life: grading essays for hours, strolling down York Road,
stopping for a latte at Starbucks. My 1920’s fantasy is, I think, a pretty
common dream for English teachers and other bookish types. There was even a
movie about it: Midnight in Paris, directed
by Woody Allen, in which Owen Wilson plays a struggling author who finds
himself magically transported to 1920’s Paris. He carouses with Fitzgerald and
Hemingway and T.S. Eliot and the rest of their gang, and at first everything is
great. But gradually, he realizes, that none of his idols are very happy,
despite living in what seems like literary heaven. In fact, many of them are
bored of 20’s and wish they lived instead in the late 1800’s, an era called the
Belle Époque in Paris. “The grass is always greener on the other side,” the
movie seems to say, “It’s human nature to wish we were elsewhere, to wonder
what our lives would be like if we had been born in another place and another
time. And it’s ok to daydream – but don’t forget about the good things you
have.”
 |
| Marion Cotillard in Midnight in Paris, a film that always makes me smile. |
But I think
most people’s definition of “transcendent” is much too narrow. We assume that
the only truly transcendent moments in our lives must be major life events – weddings,
births, important birthdays, etc. We assume that a random Thursday in January
is ineligible to host a transcendent moment. And as a result, we spend our
lives looking forward to, or looking back at just a scant few big moments. And
we spend a lot of the rest of the time idealizing both the future and the past.
For my
money, one of the most overused clichés is “Enjoy the little things.” Still, it doesn’t get to be a cliché if there
isn’t at least some truth to it. The problem with “Enjoy the little things” isn’t
that it’s bad advice. It’s that that we’ve heard it so often, we’ve stopped
thinking about what it actually means.
I’ve been
trying harder to enjoy the little things, lately. And I’ve realized that when I
stop to think about it, incredible moments happen all the time.
Last
Wednesday, I picked up my two-year-old twins from school for the first time. It
was the first full day they’d ever spent away from their parents, and my wife
and I were both nervous and excited to see how they’d do. When I pulled up to
the school at 4 PM, all of the children were running around on the playground.
I opened the gate and stepped inside. When my son, who had been playing in the
sandbox, spotted me, his eyes got huge. He screamed “DADDDDDYYYYYY!” and rushed
to wrap himself around my leg. My daughter, on the other hand, played it cool,
giving me only a little grin before running in the direction of the jungle gym.
Still, seeing my boy’s eyes light up in that one moment, seeing his unadulterated
affection and relief: It was a transcendent moment.
On Friday, I
met up with one of my closest friends, whom I used to teach with when I lived
in DC. We used to see each other every day at school, and often at home too,
since he was my downstairs neighbor in our small apartment building, but it had
been about three months since I’d last seen him. We met at a fantastic Indian
restaurant in Columbia, about halfway between DC and Baltimore, and for two
hours, we caught each other up on our jobs, our families, our upcoming plans.
It was just dinner with a friend – nothing too out of the ordinary – but it made
me so thankful for our long friendship, and for the comfort I feel with him,
even not having seen him for several months. It was a transcendent moment.
And then, on
Monday morning at BL, I opened up an e-mail from my boss giving me a heads
up that he and about ten parents of prospective students would be dropping in
to my first period AP Lang class. When you’re a teacher, this sort of thing
happens from time to time. It’s basically the closest thing to a pop quiz I’ve
experienced in my adult life. So sure enough, it’s about 8:30, I’m in the
middle of a discussion in Lang – we’re grading examples of student responses to
the synthesis question on the 2015 Lang Exam. And in walk my boss, the head of admissions, and ten random strangers. “Don’t choke,” I think to
myself, “Also, try to act naturally.” It’s pretty nerve-racking – but it’s also
invigorating. I’ve found that what often happens in situations like these is
that my students feel the pressure too. There’s an unseen fire stoked
underneath us, and together, without even acknowledging the situation out loud,
we go into overdrive. It’s as though the guys in my class are saying to me, in
a voice that only we can hear, “Don’t worry, Mr. Barron. We got you.” They’re
totally engaged. They say all sorts of great things. We volley comments back
and forth like tennis partners. In short, these guys make a potentially
stress-inducing moment into the highlight of my day – and I just love them for
it. When the visitors exit the classroom after fifteen minutes or so, we
collectively exhale. It’s not even second period yet, and I’ve already had a
transcendent moment.
I’m not
trying to imply that any of these moments is on par with my wedding or the
birth of my children. But they were special in their own right – special enough
for me to call them transcendent. If I were to place all of my experiences on a
number line, with “zero” being total mediocre blankness, then maybe my wedding
is a ten. And maybe picking up my children from nursery school is a five. A
five is still transcendent. It doesn’t have to be a once-in-a-lifetime
earth-shattering experience, to earn that description.
In the past
week, I’ve experienced three transcendent moments – and that’s a conservative
assessment. That can only mean one thing: these must be the good old days.
