To Count, To Make a Difference

Yesterday I woke up without any plan at all for the day! Maybe four times in a calendar year is there such a day for me. Now remember, it may be my Teutonic blood which craves a plan, or my mother’s insistence that one gets so much more accomplished when one has a plan—whatever it is, I plan. I plan on days off; I plan when I may relax; I plan when I may be spontaneous. So yesterday was an unusual day. No plan! There was an inkling of a plan in the morning—there was supposed to be a grand going-out last night with a colleague, but that never materialized. So I spent the day plan-less. (I must admit I started to plan this blog entry, but then since it was officially a plan-less day, in the end I decided to wait until today when I knew I would resume my planning. Does the existence of an Official Plan-less Day actually constitute a plan??) I read outside in the warm, afternoon sun, fell asleep lazily over a novel, a book about Jan van Eyck, and a book about teaching. I watched two old movies, Anastasia and Double Indemnity. I wrote a couple emails, made a pot of soup—but there was no plan to the day.

In the afternoon I also caught up on some of the news of the last week. I have been intrigued by the events in Egypt all year, so I took great interest in Egypt’s first real voting since 1952. The results of Egypt’s first democratic parliamentary elections do not matter as much as the drama of the first day of voting, when millions of Egyptian citizens from all backgrounds mobbed the polls and cast ballots for the first time. Two threads in the story stayed with me through my lazy day. One reporter made it clear that the voting was not just seen as a right, but if you were found not to have voted, you were fined! (Think about how weak voter turn-out is in the USA—sometimes under 50% of eligible voters—maybe we should start fining our less-than-patriotic errant eligible voters!). The other story I liked so much involved a quotation from a twenty-something Egyptian who said he wanted his vote “to count” and “to make a difference.”

What an important concept! As I re-read Bill Ayres’ book on teaching for the 5th time, I came upon the end of Chapter 1. In the book this energetic, passionate teachers asks people why they teach given the lower salary and status of other professional careers. Ayres writes that “Teaching is an act of hope for a better future….the reward of teaching is knowing that your life makes a difference.” So many blog entries about counting this week! This statement is not especially novel—but when you line it up with the quotidian act of voting, as in Egypt, and the excitement over counting and the hopes for a better future, it becomes quite a heady thought.

Egypt will not have it easy. There very likely will be impediments in this transition from what has been military rule to democracy, and also likely is that the political parties elected will not deliver exactly what the people want. These disappointed and disillusioned voters will likely return to the streets in even greater numbers than before. But—the people have been transformed in 2011. The date of January 25th is seared into the people’s minds, the date of the first mass demonstration in Tahrir Square, which led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. The mindset, expectations and attitude toward rule has been transformed in Egypt. However, most people guess that the military has not changed and is rooted in the past. In the past couple of weeks tens of thousands of Egyptians have returned to protest in Tahrir Square—indeed, that square has been “legitimized” as the space for “people’s power” to confront the army-dominated regime. Tahrir Square has been the pulse of this burgeoning “people’s power” but now those people must discover what the people want and convey its will. Then they will become more powerful than the army and will insist on parliamentary accountability and that the Parliament will deliver.

Somehow in the midst of my lazy, plan-less day, I went from thinking about Egypt to other adventures in the world. As I basked in a sunny, December day I thought about one of my favorite stories. You probably can guess what story/movie it is: a storm separated her from her family, and her weathered farmhouse was ripped from the earth and spun around like a top. The events happened so fast it is easy to see why the young girl was afraid. But then suddenly, and unexpectedly, the screen lit up in dazzling Technicolor, soft music played in the background, and the girl’s world became one of enchantment. Dorothy Gale was in a multi-colored world far away from her home in Kansas. Dorothy sang and danced her way through her magical new world, caught between a desire for adventure and a hunger for her safe and loving home. Who doesn’t want to follow her, to be one of her new friends, and share in her journey??? When Dorothy sings, “Over the Rainbow,” who isn’t spellbound by the longing and hope she expresses?

So as I drifted in and out of my lazy, afternoon nap, I juggled the books on my lap, the stories of Egyptians, teachers, and the motley crew of The Wizard of Oz in my head. Let’s remind ourselves of a few things about The Wizard: it is the story of a journey, complete with lessons about heart, courage, inclusion, self-determination, and the will to succeed in the face of daunting obstacles. Dorothy also wanted to count, to make a difference. In many ways it is a parallel to the 1930s, the time of its greatest cinematic creation, but also just about any time since then. My, my—whoever thought of this parallel to Arab Spring??

A few years ago, in one of my Christmas letters, I was thinking about The Wizard of Oz then too. I wrote, “Although I haven’t seen any wicked witches or flying monkeys lately, a great tornado of events has shaken our community and our nation. We are emerging from our houses, much like Dorothy, to find that our world looks nothing like it did before. Where there was once predictability and order there is now uncertainty and adventure. But, like the movie, where there was only black and white, there is now Technicolor, adventure and opportunity. We all know Dorothy never actually traveled to a new place. Instead, she had the rare opportunity to see beyond the limitations she and others placed upon herself and her world, and looked over the rainbow to the colorful possibilities that, as she later learns, had been there all along. Our environment has been shaken by economic, political, and social forces that provide us the same opportunity to look over the rainbow and “see” the excitement and adventure in our own community.”

What powerful images and ideas emerge from that chestnut of a movie. As I work on notes for the professional development seminar I will lead tomorrow, and re-read a great book on teaching, I marvel how the 1939 M-G-M classic movie has many lessons for us. The Egyptians have many lessons for us. We can weave together all of these for another reminder of how we can “count” and indeed “make a difference.” And most importantly, we have the opportunity to fashion our future and achieve great things. Like Dorothy, we must recognize that the power to achieve our goals lies not in Emerald City far away, but right at our own feet.