I was having a discussion with a friend of mine about what a person's role in society really should be, and more specifically about your role as a coach. Given our difference in age (ten years), we had very different perspectives, but it was a healthy exchange.
One thing that I think we couldn't totally agree on was that of your responsibilities as a coach. She feels that you show up to coach and let the rest of the school take care of itself. My feeling is that your role has to be bigger than that, and that really everyone involved with a school has to be deeply involved to ensure its success, and the success of its kids. I don't disagree with her take, but for me, given my experience in general, that's not entirely adequate.
She observed that I'm generally very skeptical. No question about it... I am. But I also explained that I used to be jaded. Being jaded is being skeptical without any hope, and that's a crappy way to live. Being skeptical is healthy because you have hope, but you're cautious and rarely expect that things will just take care of themselves.
So how does one get that way? Being jaded for me came from working for local government, a city and school system, immediately followed by working for a giant corporation that became a magnificent failure. I lost hope in "the system" on both counts.
Eventually, particularly during my layoffs, I slowly started to get my own perspective back. These days I'm feeling that fire I felt in college to see a cause and believe in it. It's not that I feel no one else can get it right at all, I just think that in education in particular, you have to be involved. I'm not sure what motivates me to do that other than my feelings that education failed me, my brother and countless people I've encountered in the work world, but I guess I feel that it won't get better if I sit back and assume other people will take care of it.
It all comes down to that hope. I think that's the motivator. With hope, you feel as if you can make a difference. Hope isn't about letting someone else do it. Retaining it isn't easy, because the world has a way of beating you into submission. That has been a recurring theme in counseling, that we tend to be a product of our environment, and an environment that squashes you tends to kill your hope.
One other thing that did come out of the conversation was also a realization that I can't fix everything, and I'm honestly trying to work on that. Someday I hope to find a balance where I can live my life in a manner that balances self-preservation with philanthropy and passion.
Enough thinking for today... I'm going to watch the mindlessness of the MTV VMA's.
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