A monk on my shoulder

One morning last Spring, as I was walking to school, I had this feeling that someone was with me. It was a good feeling, like someone was sitting on my shoulder, encouraging me, whispering in my ear, “We’re here. We know you can do this.”

It wasn’t a special day for me, I didn’t have any big challenge coming up, but it was nice having someone with me. It was kind of the opposite of feeling alone in a crowd of people. I was alone, but I felt like I had a crowd of people with me, supporting me, helping me to be my best.  I thought, “This, this is what I want for my kids. That even when they leave the classroom they feel like I’m with them, that they can do anything, that our whole class is behind them, supporting them in whatever they do.”

It turned out that the person who was with me was Jordan Thorn (the former tanto at the zen center and current treasurer). Obviously, he wasn’t actually with me (and if you know Jordan you know he certainly wasn’t perched on my shoulder!) but since that day, I’ve tried to figure out what it was that made me feel like he was with me. The only thing I could think was that I had been taking a class with Jordan.  I don’t think I had even had dokusan with him yet so I still don’t know what it was.

But the same thing happened again after I had dokusan with Paul at the one day sit. The very next day, as I was planning my lessons for the week, there he was, standing right next to me, watching me organize my papers, a smile of approval on his face. It made things easier. I was struggling with “letting go” and having him next to me, as I put away my plan book and focused on eating dinner instead, gave me the willingness to actually do the hard thing: let go.

This last week I spent some extra time with Boy 1 after school. We worked together for about a half hour, me trying to convince him to just follow the muscle movement for writing the letter r in cursive, instead of doing what he normally does, which is to draw the r in cursive. It took a really long time but I noticed, that by the end, he was saying to himself a version of what I was saying to him: “Okay, focus, just do the letter.”

Honestly, I don’t know if this is the beginning of him feeling like I’m there with him when I’m not. I don’t know if he feels like he can do anything because I believe in him. But I think he’s beginning to trust that it’s okay to learn from me, that he doesn’t have to do everything himself, that he really can learn.

I still don’t know what Paul and Jordan did that made me feel like they were with me.  I’m guessing that it comes from time and from trust. I’ll bet too that it’s not something that I can do for Boy 1, that it can only happen and I probably can’t control it or even make it happen. But for now, I’m going to try to at least sustain what seems to be happening with Boy1, and maybe try to pay attention to what Paul does that might be making me feel like he’s with me too.