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Body paranoia | page 1, 2
One of the things I inherited from my father was an infinite capacity for
worrying. I remember once when we were having some logging done on the
ranch, Dad's mantra was, "Now we've got to make sure they don't drop a tree
on the water line." He repeated it endlessly throughout the preparations
for cutting down the trees. Then the logger almost immediately dropped a
tree on the water line, as if he were the agent of a dark force
specifically sent to torment my father. Dad never admitted the inner price
he was paying for his anxious temperament, though. He didn't troop
regularly to the doctor in search of reassurance, at least as far as I
knew. In those days men like my father only went to the doctor if they were
carried there on a stretcher. It doesn't help matters much that I worry so much about my students.
Sometimes I think I've chosen a career that mandates a continual
maintenance of debilitating anxiety. While my students probably walk out of
my classroom thinking about what they are going to have for dinner or what
the guy in the next row meant when he said, "lookin' good," I am stewing
about whether my explanation of Jung's concept of the collective
unconscious penetrated their consciousness. And there are always enough of
them who hang around to ask, "What did you mean by that?" to make me wonder
if I made any sense at all, and whether my teaching really touches their
lives. Three of my closest friends are teachers. One almost died on the operating
table, another is battling recurring cancer and the other can barely speak
sometimes from the pressure cooker of her job. One of
the students in my evening philosophy class is an elementary school teacher
who shows up with enormous stacks of papers she grades during the discussions. "Regular
feedback, they need regular feedback," she said once, justifying the
self-torture she puts herself through in assigning so much homework.
One of my colleagues actually asks students who are not doing their work if
he can stop worrying about them. He says many of them act surprised, as if
the thought never occurred to them that a teacher might spend a second worrying about them. Most of the time we don't talk about our stress; we just walk around
wearing strange masks that we all recognize as badges of commitment. All the "helping professions" involve a similar kind of
self-sacrifice, no doubt, but I don't think there is anything particularly
noble about such career-induced suicide. We may even be hurting the people we are trying to
help by burning ourselves up and then disappearing into our own self-involved stress, thinking somehow that we are paying the logical price for human compassion. And what kind of a role
model is the person who seems to suffer so much from the act of service?
Everybody would be better served if we simply relaxed and had more fun. Easier said than done. In the meantime, I do wish I could get this lump out of my throat. It seems
to have been stuck there forever.
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