March 05th, 2007
Listening To The Spirals Of Time
From Hamlet (I, v, 166-167), William Shakespeare It was close to 8 O'clock on Friday morning when I arrived at the Central Eleuthera High School. The Taxi-van rattled through the school-gate, past the security guard in green fatigues and a slim white man in dark sunglasses, into the parking lot in front of the school. When I told the driver who I was meant to meet, he said, 'Oh Mr Cairns. We just passed him', by which time the man in sunglasses, Mr Cairns was already approaching the taxi-van. Cairns seemed a little nervous. So was I. Something about him reminded me of my high-school history teacher Mr Cooke, which then reminded me of Mr Leaver, my geography teacher, Mr Nicols - math, and soon, within a matter of seconds I was back, at QC, high-school reliving all of the performance anxieties of those years. Cairns quickly passed me to the senior mistress, Mrs Galanas who ushered me into the main school-house. I'd come prepared to interview some twelfth-graders, talk to some young self-starters, to find out what motivated them. What was challenging about being in high school, particularly a family-island school? What was great about being there? I'd packed my tape-recorder along with three new 90 minute cassette tapes, but now that I was sitting in the foyer, nursing my cup of black-coffee, and waiting for school to begin, I couldn't bring myself to take the tape-recorder and tapes out of my bag. And so I sat there, drinking, breathing, watching, waving and chatting with the stream of teachers passing by - Mr Culmer, Miss Burrows, Mrs Nixon, Mr Gosling, and the Principle Mr Cleare, to name a few - and, most of all listening to the environment around me, not just with my ears but with my whole self - mind, body, soul and spirit. Our culture is preoccupied with a definition of intelligence as a primarily academic enterprise. We tend to measure aptitude mainly in terms of reading, writing and more recently computer literacy, but our ability to truly listen is also a measure of intelligence. But, make no mistake, listening is not the same as hearing. Hearing is our ability to receive auditory information not only through our ears but also through our skin and bones. Helen Keller (the blind and deaf) educator learned to hear with her hands. Evelyn Glenni, a contemporary young Scottish percussion soloist learns her music by hugging a stereo speaker or holding a cassette player in her lap. Listening, however, is an entirely different matter. It is the ability to filter, selectively focus on, remember, and respond to the energy around us. In other words, listening is active. Hearing is passive. Listening helps us connect with each other. Listening shows us how the fragments of facts, experiences, thoughts are connected. And, as we said last week, everything is connected to everything else. Just as school was about to begin Mrs Galanis pulled me aside. 'Before you talk to the 12th graders', she said, 'I'd like you to talk to this mixed group of 10th, 11th and 12th graders', she said, '...if you don't mind', she said. She told me more about the students, details about what they were doing, but all I could hear was her love and desire for them to make the best of their lives. I stood there, in front of this large group of teenagers, for a moment, not really knowing what to say to them. I remembered oh too well how uninspired I was by adults who came to my high-school spouting platitudes like 'Do well!' 'Study hard!' 'Make the best of your life'. I remembered how I'd said to myself 'Oh for goodness sakes...enough already.' But not the shoe was on the other foot, I was feeling lost for words. And so I started to talk, listening to my intuition - which seemed to form itself into intelligible sounds as the words fell out of my mouth - watching their faces, sharing some of my experiences, truths, thoughts, wandering whether I was getting through to them - whether they were listening or just hearing, then asking them questions about their lives, and responding to them as best I could. Although they seemed to be amused by the fact that I was once married to a Russian, Canadian Jewish man named Boris – which made them laugh hysterically - their reactions were tempered and I was left wandering whether anything I'd said had made a difference to them. When I returned to Nassau that evening and logged onto my computer, I received the answer to my question in an email that astonished and inspired me. But first we need to step back in time for a moment to fully appreciate the beauty and power of this message from the world-wide web. About six months ago, July 27th 2006, while I was on holiday in London, I received an email I have kept and will always treasure. It came from a young girl named Ashley. She'd somehow found out about me, checked out my www.soulimagination.org website and fired off a message. The email entitled 'Please don't ignore this', was touching and exuberant and gutsy. She said she was 14...well 13 going on 14, that she was from Eleuthera, that she was a singer/songwriter, that she really wanted a career in the music...to be a singer like Mariah carey, or Beyonce, or Rihanna. I got her energy or wanting something so badly you could almost taste it, that feeling I'd had as a teenager living in Nassau, of being trapped on an island, stuck on what occurred for me at that age as a tiny God-forsaken island where time seemed to stand still, that feeling like I was about to explore, like I'd never-ever-ever-ever get away. Her last words in the email spoke volumes. 'I'm just a girl', she wrote, 'with a dream waiting to come true. I know I can make a difference. Please write back.' I wrote back. I wasn't sure I'd said the right thing. I felt like a wet rag, telling her how important it was to finish high school, to keep on writing but to also concentrate on her school-work. But she thanked me, and wrote with some pride that she was actually a good student When I returned from Central Elethera High on Friday evening, after giving the talk to 10th, 11th and 12th graders, and saw her name in my inbox the penny dropped. 'HEY!!! Wow you actually came to my school,' she wrote 'That was the first time I've ever seen you in my life. I mean, I wanted to talk to you so bad, but I thought you had already forgotten who I am. So... I dismissed the idea. But what you said up there had literally got me thinking that I can achieve something with my life. And by the way I really admired the way that you are so talented. I can never be as talented but that's not the point. Point is, I hope to be as successful as you. And I know that someone already told you thanks for coming to Central Eleuthera High. BUT I really want to say thanks. I'm internalizing most of what you said. You are a REAL inspiration. There's so much more to share with you about the self-starters at Central Eleuthera High School. I haven't even began to share what the 12th graders taught me about surviving being a high-flyer with high ambitions on a small island, or about how Mrs Galanis inspired her graduating class of 2005, Andrea Culmer's class, how they inspired her, and how Andrea inspired her class, and still continues to her teachers even in her absence. All of this will come later. But I want you to be inspired by Ashley's beautiful and energetic spirit and intelligence, someone who is listening to her world, someone who's openness to listening and sharing is treasure in our cynical world. So we end this week as we began last week: everything is connected to everything else. Or as put another way: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Until next week. Dr Desiree Cox Published in The Nassau Guardian,
'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'
_____________________________________________________________
Ashley.'
Renaissance Woman: Rhodes Scholar, medical doctor, historian, writer, jazz-singer, historian and artist
Consultant, Human Development and Urban Renewal
Office of the Prime Minister
Tuesday January 30, 2007, p A7