The powerful play goes on and on

I've been trying recently to not be too careful to justify myself. I've been trying just to live, to do what feels natural - seeing what comes of it. Trying also to do some honest thinking about how things are - at least how they seem to me.

Sometimes it's funny to me that the most heated debate to occupy these pages is about football. The football debate may deserve its place in print but so does something else. Sometimes I wonder why Oberlin doesn't have something more to say - maybe we're not that type of place.

We are a place where a person can fall down the stairs as students watch and then keep walking, without even asking to help her. A woman in my hall was telling me about how she witnessed this. Made me sad in a way, made me think about where I am. Seems funny that we live in an environment where we read about humanity, about how to be good people and care for each other and yet we avert our eyes when we pass each other on the sidewalk.

Other things don't make sense to me too. A high school student I tutored told me about how he was followed home by a cop car for no reason. They turned their speaker up loud so he could hear them radio in his license plate number. Made me angry because I know that he's a good person and because I know also that he shouldn't have to cope with that just because he's black.

And then there are the things which I've messed up by myself. I began tutoring high school students this year because I believed I had something to learn and something to offer. One of the first students I tutored in history quit - decided after a couple sessions that she would rather fail on her own than bother to work with a tutor. I blame myself for failing her, for failing to make the class meaningful and relevant. Aside from feeling really lousy, the experience made me realize the need for energetic creativity in our learning relationships. I was depressed because she quit and more pessimistic about people, but I was also more hopeful because I knew I could do better. Hope, for me, is knowing that I can do better.

Seems like there are a lot of people who could use some hope. Some kids at the high school are failing just because they don't believe that there's something more out there. No one cares enough to reach them. They are allowed to slip through the cracks with no sense of their own future or any sense of purpose in doing something. The system is a system where many teachers expect students to meet their standards instead of expecting to meet the needs of students. Human interaction has become bleak and uncreative. So what happens? I asked a high school teacher what happened to the kids who didn't make it. For awhile he was silent, then he said that they probably found low paying jobs. So I guess they find a way. It just seems to me that something is being lost.

Sometimes I give myself the most intense headaches just by thinking about things too much. The young man I tutor once told me that it was important not to "stir up more trouble than you can handle." Maybe he's right. Maybe there's no point to bothering myself.

Watching the Presidential debate a couple of weeks ago it was clear that Dole and Clinton sure weren't interested in stirring up any trouble. They weren't interested in stirring up much of anything - they didn't talk about much of anything. Maybe that's where most of society is at. Maybe it's easier to look away from things that are happening right in front of us, maybe it's better.

I once read this line by James Agee where he said "in every child who is born, under no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again." There are people, I think, who believe this to be true; people who work, who struggle, who save what they can of that potential, of that hope.

I wonder if they do it cause it needs to be done or because it makes them feel better. Doesn't make much difference, I guess. It gets done one way or another out of some kind of concern.

We choose what we are to be concerned with - what we see and choose not to see. I'm always feeling stuck with a feeling of being caught: knowing there's things I should do to make things better and not doing enough of them. Never fully throwing myself into what needs to be done. And what I do never seems like enough. I feel bad about myself a lot of the time.

I do think there is more to being here than reading about humanity and getting into graduate school. But maybe there isn't. I believe in doing good, but I don't believe in doing good things just to feel good about myself. Maybe I'm just lying to myself. I do know I'm here to learn - I'm just not sure what.