Glimpses of a further shore or On being asked to help with a college essay

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

--the last line of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, my favorite book and one you should read immediately if you haven't already.

As the above quote shows, I'm an incurable optimist of the Don Quixote school who will gladly tilt windmills or dedicate my life to drop-hood if it means that maybe, just maybe, I can help fill the ocean. This also explains my love of our root myths like the journey of Prince Siddhartha or the resurrection. Although my cultural home is Christianity, it is the underlining narrative arc of all faiths that I truly believe in. I care less about theological particulars or what happens after we die than I do about the promise that light will eventually defeat darkness, that striving for justice or peace or renewal will bear fruit, that forgiveness is possible, that the ocean will fill with drops, slowly and surely, until the tide changes forever. Never in my lifetime, of course. But in that future Someday. And that my microscopic butterfly-wing-flapping over however many years I'm alotted on the planet will somehow contribute.

When you think about it, this is probably just as outlandish as believing that a 1st century prophet was the result of a virgin birth and the biological son of God who bodily rose from the dead, hung out for a few weeks then was whisked up to heaven through the clouds. But it's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I've been thinking a lot more than usual about these questions since my first class of students have become seniors in high school. In a world where examples of failure, greed and darkness constantly parade before us, I have been treated to brilliant shafts of light in the form of these teenagers. You will be glad to know that there are members of the up-and-coming generation who have tilted and run over real monsters like poverty and homelessness and yet remain on the path to academic and personal success. One even asked me for help with her college essay. As a middle school writing teacher, this is immensely satisfying, even dreamed-of--the equivalent of actually giving the "I'd like to thank the Academy" speech aspiring actors practice in front of the mirror. More than that, though, it bolsters the kind of hope that is only possible if you believe that little victories add up to big ones. This particular student's life is a dramatic case in point, but certainly not the only one. She lost both of her parents and lived in shelters for most of her life until being adopted by a couple from her church, who sent her to a private Christian school in Oakland. She is now applying to college and will no doubt be accepted. She is a senior in high school, a typical teenager who hates chores and a blinding beacon of what is possible.

Naysayers will point to all the not-beacons out there, the kids without a kindly couple from church, without an email list of editors-in-waiting or whatever other advantages that came the way of my former student or those like her. It's true. There are so many of them. And some are also my former students: girls who are now pregnant, young men (and women) who haven't been able to slip the bonds of addiction or crime or whatever else ails life these days. What to do in response to this wildly contrasting reality? Some will throw up their hands; some will batten the hatches and get as much for themselves and those like them as possible. Some will continue to work to squeeze a few more drops into the ocean. It's no secret whose team I'm on, and all of my students make it possible to stay here, hopeful and even happy, that the changing of the tide is coming.

So hope for a great sea-change

on the far side of revenge.

Believe that a further shoreis reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

and cures and healing wells.

--Seamus Heaney, "The Cure at Troy (excerpt)"