A few days ago one of my students used all of class to change his shirt. We were watching a video on Everest and the lights were out. The boy knew I wouldn’t give him a hall pass to change, so he sat there for forty minutes, first putting on the shirt he wanted to wear over his old shirt and then spending the next thirty-nine minutes pulling a Houdini, twisting and stretching until he had worked the old shirt out from under the new one.
He came into class wearing a white shirt. He left wearing a black one. (At this point I thought I’d pause to answer a question I’m sure you’re asking which is why didn’t I stop him and refocus his attention on the video and all I can say is that as teachers we pick our battles, especially with thirteen year olds. He was quiet and not disruptive. I didn’t even realize what he had done until the end. Periodically I had caught sight of him during class and thought at worst he was having spasms of some kind and that maybe I should send him to the clinic.)
When the video ended, he stood up, produced his old shirt in a “ta-da” type fashion and waited for glory and praise to be heaped on him for his accomplishment.
Instead the girl behind him wrinkled her nose and said, “Your shirt smells.”
Honestly, such scenes are why I’ve kept on teaching 8th grade all these years. I sometimes get tired of what I teach. I never get tired of my students. I never get tired of the hidden life lessons in the most silliest of stories.
Your shirt smells.
All that hard work and instead of being praised, he was ridiculed. But even though he didn’t get the reaction he wanted, he shouldn’t feel bad. That girl’s words cannot take away from what he accomplished. He pulled a Houdini. He accomplished something and that something cannot be erased by someone’s words.
It’s an important thing to remember. Words cannot erase deeds.
I hope he knows that. If he knows that then at least he learned something in class that day.
Even if he hadn’t been changing his shirt, though, he still would have learned something watching the video on Everest. He would have learned something about character and why we strive to do things that seem impossible.
For the past few years, I have been showing the same video on Everest to my students to help them better visualize the novel we’re reading, Peak by Roland Smith. Just above Camp Three on Everest, climbers enter the “Death Zone.” From just above Camp Three to the top of the mountain, the digestive system shuts down and your body actually begins consuming itself. It is impossible to live more than a few days in the Death Zone.
The video shows some spectacular views from the top. The climbers are literally above the clouds. They are hanging out at heights people only see from inside a plane. They are giddy from the accomplishment, giddy from the lack of oxygen too I’m sure and for all the weeks and months of preparation, they only get about a half hour at the top. They’ve risked their lives for thirty minutes.
But it was thirty minutes on the mountain top of all mountain tops.
And I’m sure that what they remember about that day are not the words of congratulations. I’m sure what they remember about that day is the view. To be able to look out and point to a far off speck and say, “That was where I was. This is where I am now. Look at what I’ve accomplished.”
What we do in life is what is important, not what people say to us, not words of criticism or words of congratulations. We must live for each moment and not for the validation.
We don’t need people to validate our existence.
Jesus didn’t show his wounds to Thomas to prove to himself that he was alive. He was Jesus, the Son of God, one-third of the Trinity. He understood his relationship to the world better than anyone in the history of human existence. And he knew those things from the inside out. He didn’t need Thomas to acknowledge him. Whether Thomas believed in him or not did not erase who he was.
So what did I learn that day in class? What did the teacher learn? God put us on earth to do good things, to do beautiful things, to be in communion with Him. And nothing, especially not words can erase those things once they are past. What’s done is done and cannot be taken away.
Or as poet Ezra Pound once said, “What thou lovest well shall not be reft from thee.”
