Trying to love well

Antonio (not his real name) sat in the back of my digital media class, kicked back in his chair. It was a crowded class right after lunch with every seat occupied by 30+ high schoolers. Fluorescent blue slushees and Takis were being finished as they made their way into the room.

From day 1 in the class, Antonio just didn’t give a $#@% about doing any of the work, which was frustrating because I tried hard to create engaging projects for the students. But Antonio was more interested in chatting it up with a couple of girls who sat nearby. 

When I would talk to Antonio about this, attempting to redirect him back toward the work, he would just stare back with a sort of blank expression and the hint of a smirk. Maybe a nod. But otherwise nonresponsive. I’d try to make sure he understood how to do the work. He’d be quiet for a few minutes, and then go back to chatting it up with the girls nearby. 

Over a couple of months of doing this, my frustration with Antonio just went up while his grades and project work bottomed out. 

I thought he was lazy and mischievous. 

Not long after, as a staff, we were looking through some student data to try and understand how to better support struggling students. Antonio’s name was in the mix. 

In Antonio’s data and through conversations with other teachers, I pieced together that he had been to 14+ schools by the time he was a sophomore. He had been homeless and out of school for multiple stretches of middle and high school. And that was just what we knew about.

There was a much larger story to Antonio than my short-sided, quick judgments allowed. I had not worked to build a relationship with Antonio to know any of that story. Why would he commit much to a project or some new, unknown teacher if the one thing he did know in his young life was that he was never anywhere for long? 

And I realized so clearly that Antonio’s first 16 years of life were pretty much the opposite of my own life to age 16. I know some people get all bristly when the word privilege is used, but it was an important concept for me to consider at that moment. 

I like the cycling metaphor for privilege (thanks to my friend Drew for reminding me of it). You might start out on a bike ride and you are feeling pretty strong, making good progress with each pedal stroke. You’re cruising. And then it comes time to turn around. You head back to where you came from, and you realize you are riding into the wind now. It’s much more difficult, with each pedal stroke requiring more work to make the same progress. It’s much harder. You realize the first half of the ride, you had these wonderful tail winds aiding you all along, and you didn’t even know it. Those tailwinds, that you don’t even realize were there, are what privilege is.

Understanding Antonio’s story asked me to see the many tailwinds I had growing up in a comfortable, consistent, low stress, middle to upper class life, full of access to every possible opportunity. I didn’t need to feel bad about that – everybody is deserving of those tailwinds. But I needed to understand how my privilege positioned me differently as compared to others. 

I didn’t see Antonio, or anyone really, in quite the same way moving forward. When I was at my best as a teacher, I began from the starting point of assuming each student had a full, lived experience that shaped how they showed up in my class. When I could do that, my job was to be a humble, curious partner traveling alongside them for a time. Looking back now, I wish I could have done that so much better, especially understanding their stories. But it was the beginning of some important learning for me. 

I first learned of the Fundamental Attribution Error via the Heath brothers, I think through their book Switch. Fundamental Attribution Error points at our tendency to judge other people’s behavior by their internal character while judging our own behavior based on external circumstances. A simple example could be when a friend cancels plans to meet up – we assume they don’t care enough about our relationship and are flaky. Whereas if we cancel plans, we can focus on how exhausted, sick, and/or overwhelmed we are. 

In Antonio’s example, I judged his internal character to be lazy and mischievous as a person, not acknowledging at all the external circumstances surrounding Antonio’s lived experience. And I judged my own effectiveness as a teacher based on my internal commitment to becoming a good teacher, giving myself the benefit of the doubt when the external circumstances made teaching pretty hard to do well.

I was left with a question I had not asked: how were the conditions that had surrounded Antonio his whole life shaping him to show up exactly as he was? 

I’m not trying to take away Antonio’s agency and responsibility in also doing better. My better understanding of his external circumstances is not some effort to hand out an excuse for his choices. It was me understanding Antonio as a human who was doing the best with what he had in that moment, so I could be a better partner with him. 

Another connected example of Fundamental Attribution Error that is always in my mind stems from my wife’s non-profit work alongside CPS workers. Stacey would regularly come home with indescribably tragic stories of what happened to some kids. Nightmarish stuff that you couldn’t even make up if you tried. 

Should we be surprised when kids who have seen way more than their fair share of challenge and tragedy grow into young adults that make some bad choices? When they make those bad choices as an adult, do we judge their internal character as inherently flawed OR do we get curious about how life might have shaped them to show up exactly as they are? Again, it’s not about taking away their agency in the process. 

It is about getting the bigger picture so we can meet them where they are. 

In the last few years, I’ve thought about and written about love quite a bit. Antonio’s story and the lessons learned, like so many reflections for me lately, connect to what I believe love is all about. But maybe the word “love” has lost meaning, to the point there are so many different interpretations as to defy any shared meaning? 

So, in the spirit of getting clearer for myself and maybe stirring up some thinking, here’s a couple of thoughts I’ve been having about love and loving well. 

LOVE IS CHOOSING CURIOSITY BEFORE JUDGEMENT

And I had not done that with Antonio. At all. Until the fuller story of Antonio punched me in my smug face. 

How could I have supported, connected to, and loved Antonio better if I had started with curiosity? Sadly I don’t know because I didn’t do that. I do know I have the chance to try that in my next difficult encounter. I know I’ll have to get better at catching myself running up the ladder of judgment. And I’ll continue to get it wrong plenty, but I’m committed to getting it right more often. 

I’ve heard Brian McLaren point to the idea of getting below the emotion to understand the story. That feels like choosing curiosity.

Bruce Perry, known for his research into childhood trauma, reached some level of public awareness after co-writing a book with Oprah. They encourage us to move on from “what’s wrong with you?” and shift to “what happened to you?” That’s a completely different framing grounded in a more humble, loving curiosity.

And it’s not just about curiosity as I engage externally with others. It’s also about getting curious with my own internal reactions, emotions, feelings, etc. Why did Antonio get on my nerves so easily? What sits below those? What about my larger lived experience has shaped why I have those reactions? Are those first reactions valid, or likely incomplete? 

It’s difficult not to associate curiosity with humility. I think they just go hand in hand. Choosing to get curious is choosing not to follow the deep ego-driven ruts of my typical pathways for making sense of things. It’s slowing down enough to take in a larger picture, a fuller story than what any singular moment might seem to present to me. 

Curiosity is good fuel for compassion. 

LOVE IS CHOOSING TO SEE EACH AND EVERY PERSON AS YOUR NEIGHBOR AND YOUR EQUAL

When my first kid was young, in one of the many parenting resources I read or watched while trying to thread the needle of becoming a good Dad, I saw a video of another Dad doing a nighttime ritual with his kiddo. The Dad would say something, and the kid would repeat it. It included something like, “I am no better than anyone else. I am no worse than anyone else.” Man…that’s a good lesson to start early.

I’ll own that at younger points in my life, I sometimes saw some people as lesser than in some way. There were a lot of reasons for that, including my own ego and willful ignorance/fear to understand another human. All those tailwinds of privilege I had played a role too. And there certainly are a host of long-standing societal conditions that situated me to think lesser of some others.

Though I didn’t grasp it at the time with Antonio, my role was not to be Antonio’s savior…his knight in shining armor. My job was to be a partner and teacher for him, seeing him as an equal inhabitant of my community, equally worthy of all the support and love I could give him. Especially when it was hard to do that.

At the risk of writing about this too often, I’ve just experienced at too many times a visceral, deep in my bones sorta knowing that we are all deeply connected to one another. That we are deeply woven together, including the natural world around us. All the faith traditions point to it, and so does science. 

When we can clear away the noise, which often happens in our most difficult moments, I believe we all know this deep, divine interconnection is real. It’s high time for you and me to make sure we are acting like we know this. 

Lilla Watson, an Australian artist, activist and educator, said, “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Isn’t that it? Isn’t that what love your neighbor is all about? Not some pitying, from a height sort of love. It’s a down in it together sort of love. 

My role with Antonio was to love him in full recognition of our deep interconnectedness…that his right to a joyful life was bound up with my own. 

As I look around the world, I see a sad pattern of people acting from some place of superiority, as if they carry more worth than someone else. And it is just sad. I think that toxic belief undergirds all the wars we see happening. I see it in how people in the service industry are often treated (we somehow forgot who the “essential workers” were during the Covid pandemic). I see it in how we consistently fail to love and lift those at the margins of our society, whether they are poor, an immigrant, sick, elderly, a veteran, LGBTQIA+, disabled, etc. We see them, consciously or subconsciously, as less than in some way.

I’m grateful for my Dad (or Bob T as my friends often call him) who has modeled something different for me. If you go to the grocery store, Costco, doctor, restaurant, or the auto shop with my Dad, buffer in some time for conversation with the good folks that work there! What I love to watch is how Dad sees and interacts with the full humanity of each person in those places. They light up when they see him. There’s always laughter, and it’s clear they have learned each other’s stories. 

They see each other as neighbors. As equals. They love each other as neighbors and equals.

By far the hardest work here for me is to see those I struggle the most to like, let alone love, as that very same neighbor / friend / family member that is much easier to love. It can be so hard for me to slow down and see my quick reactions to those that stir up anger or frustration in me. 

It doesn’t mean I might not sit in some righteous anger for a while with these hard-to-love folks. That righteous anger can encourage movement. And, at some point, I’ve got to find my way toward a “cleaner burning fuel” as Dan Harris says. I think that humble curiosity, both externally and internally, is a good next step.

James Baldwin once wrote, “I imagine that one of the reasons that people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” That may be where a humble curiosity eventually takes us, a place of vulnerability, which is much more honest. I find there’s a completely different conversation that will be had from that place. One that might actually look like loving your neighbor.

For me lately, that has looked like a move toward sadness at the gulf of felt distance between so many of us, better honoring the loss there. And ultimately, can I make it to that place of love, that knowledge that we are bound up together, deeply intertwined?

I think it’s just the human condition to fall away from the truth of our interconnection. It’s certainly been the case for me as an individual. AND…that’s what makes those that love fiercely stand out in history as the teachers we need the most.

LOVE IS BEING A WARM DEMANDER FOR ONE ANOTHER

Thinking about Antonio has me thinking about the great teachers I’ve been able to see in classrooms around the country over the years. Among the many things they taught me, I think the best teachers consistently show up as what Zaretta Hammond describes as the “Warm Demander.” 

The Warm Demander brings both a high degree of expectations for a person’s best AND an equally matched environment of support and warmth. I think this offers a wonderful parallel for what a rigorous love for someone looks like. 

The magic and the love lives in the “both/and.” If it’s just high expectations and no support/warmth, that’s just kinda arrogant. If it’s all warmth but low expectations, that’s the overly sentimental love or just playing nice. But put the two together and that’s what it looks like to really care for someone. 

Antonio didn’t just need me to design good projects for his learning and ask the best of him. He also needed me to create a space where he felt known, where he belonged, and where he would get what he needed to succeed. 

Being loved and pushed by a Warm Demander doesn’t always feel good in the moment. The appreciation for that kind of warm demanding love may be best recognized looking backward. I bet many of us can point to someone in our lives who did that for us. (If someone comes to mind, you should write/tell them they did that for you!)

LOVING BEYOND THE 1:1 RELATIONSHIP

Like every kid, Antonio needed trusting, reliable, warm and demanding love from adults. And I believe loving well requires us to ask some bigger questions too. Questions about the larger systems in which Antonio, his family, the community and I are situated within. 

What resources did Antonio and his family need that could have prevented his homeless periods, and why can’t our community provide that yet? What did our school need to be a better partner to Antonio and the many students like him? What did my fellow teachers and I need to be better teachers for him? Why is the homeless problem so persistent in our community? Why does the state of Texas focus so often on publicly shaming schools serving the most marginalized families instead of doing more to figure out why that pattern of struggle plays out over and over again…and then build capacity in the system for something better? 

Loving Antonio and his family into something better pushes me to ask and act on some bigger, collective questions. This is stepping away from my individualistic tendencies and, again, living into the knowledge that we are all deeply connected. That we are neighbors. 

In the systems thinking world, the common refrain is “The system is perfectly designed to get the results it’s getting.” Our system was perfectly designed to produce Antonio’s lived experience and all its struggles. Antonio…my student, my neighbor. That system implicates all of us, me included. So what am I doing to create a different, better set of conditions for the families and kids attending kindergarten at the school down the street? What am I doing to create better conditions for the kindergartener and the single mom working three jobs to try to keep the lights on and food on the table?

This comes back to a letting go of our individualism and an embrace of our deep interconnection. That we are bound up in one love. Your joy is my joy. My joy is yours. Your pain is my pain. My pain is yours. And we must work for systems that honor each and all of us. 

This points to some tough questions for me. I’m left asking myself what am I doing to love the people around me well (self included)...and I’m also left asking what am I doing to shape the larger systems and conditions that will love people better? What do I need to let go of for myself so I can give more to systems that lift those struggling? 

Antonio kicked off some important learning for me about what love is, playing a pivotal role in a journey that I’m still very much taking. At this point in my journey, I believe and have felt deeply that we are born fully into a divine, interconnected love. A heaven that didn’t need to be earned and that is always there. Life and all its adventures send us out and away from an awareness of that profound love. 

And then the very same life, often through our toughest moments, brings us back toward the deeper knowing of that divine love, which has always been there. Embracing that kinda love asks us to be curious and humble, to be a neighbor and an equal, to be caring and hold high expectations, and to push for systems that love well. 

Believing that and knowing that love in my bones, what will that look like for me to live into that today?

Stella and I on a recent Marfa trip. She was less interested in the art than I was!