How to Do What You're Made Of

A high school senior had come down to help out the teacher of a 7th grade class I was supporting.

She was already in the room when I got there.

The teacher lectured in front of her state-of-the-art television. She even drew on the screen with a multi-colored magic marker.

I heard without listening, and I worked on my own stuff, but I could tell that the teacher was instructing the points of a story about Amelia Earhart without making it relevant to the students.

“Why do they care about this and why is it relevant to them?” I thought.

The sit-down-and-shut-up model of education, alive and well.

The class ended and the kids filed out to receive their next deposit of homogenized, pasteurized state-approved information.

The woman across the room sitting next to the teacher’s desk hadn’t moved.

“You look like the teacher, but you’re not the lady who was teaching, right?” I thought out loud, since we had made eye contact and I got the sense that she wanted conversation.

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m a senior and I come down midday to help the teacher out,” she said.

“Oh, from the high school. That’s like, way over that way?” I responded.

“Yes, she said, it’s only a couple of minutes drive.”

“Oh right.” I said, realizing just how much growing up happens between 7th grade and 12th grade. “What kind of schedule do you have that lets you leave in the middle of the day? Is this job shadowing and you want to be a teacher or something?”

“No, not necessarily,” she reflected, “I’ll probably go to school for business or something, but I have no idea what I want to do.”

“Oh right, cuz what we need is more business people.” I thought.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do either when I was a senior.” I spent the first two years of college undecided.

She thought for a moment, and then blurted out, “I don’t even know how to do my own taxes.

She paused and then asked, “What did you study in college?”

“I had some extra things going on in college,” I said, deciding not to talk about my brain injury, “but I didn’t pick a major until my third year, and by then, after being asked some version of what’s your major so many times, I started asking myself two questions:

1. What am I made of?

   1. Like, deep down, on a soul level, and,

2. What does the world ask of me?”

   1. How do I show up and how do I most naturally serve?

   2. What do people ask me for help with?

   3. How am I served by serving others?

“Woah,” she said, “I’ve never heard those questions…” she took a long, deep breath. “I’m honestly not sure.”

“Well, to be honest, that’s a great first step.” I said with some excitement. “How does it feel to not know? Can you open to the curiosity in not having an answer ready? The challenge is to let the curiosity and ambiguity be okay, to hold it gently in your mind, and let the world show you through your experience.

If you’re willing to try on a new perspective, consider that the world is alive and ready to communicate with you, if you’ll slow down, ask, and listen with all your senses wide open.”

“Very interesting ideas,” she said, as we both gathered our stuff to leave school for the day. That was the last period, after all.

So let me ask you, dear reader.

1. What are you made of, on a deep soul level?

2. What does your world get from you?

Thanks for reading!

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