Have a Fine Year

When our daughter was little and frightening news of the world got to her, I would try to put things in perspective, "Most people, most of the time are having a fine day." This has been true throughout all of history, even when great tragedy is unfolding in one part of it. (And indeed when is it not?)

Maybe it's not a great day, although someone is also always having one of those as well, but a fine one, because most things involving humans are like that -- a little high a little low, a little hot a little cold, a little smooth a little rough. Both the optimists and the pessimists are right: it could always get better and it could always get worse. 

I suspect that most of us are pro-optimism, even if we're pessimistic by nature. It's hard not to be when you're working with young children, who themselves are generally having fine days, but by virtue of the metaphor of their youth shines for us like a light into the certainty of a better future. And even if we can't help but regret in advance the equal assurance that they will suffer, it just seems that optimism is the proper stance when it comes to the young so we pull ourselves together and say, "It will heal," "The lights will come back on," "The worst is behind us."

Around the time of the Winter Solstice, I tried this out on the grown-ups, saying things like, "This is as dark as it gets, now we can look forward to more light," or "It all gets better from here!" Most thanked me, accepting my invitation to look forward with hope, but many drew back in mock defensiveness, bubbling back, "I love the dark! I love the long night!" denying my assertion that there could be anything wrong. I understand that they were looking into the dark with the certainty of their optimism, wearing it like a shield against doubt.

Hope and fear are the two sides of this coin and both are legal currency in the marketplace of the future. There are those that claim that we create reality through our attitude, that if we anticipate success we make it more certain, while the same goes for failure. And I expect there is some truth to that, although probably a lot less than the pop philosophies would lead us to believe. In her book Bright Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America, inspired by her struggle with breast cancer, Barbara Ehrenreich, calls this faith in the determinism of attitude "the new Calvinism," seeing a world in which we are all ultimately and personally responsible for the evils that befall us, be it cancer or unemployment, casting every set-back as a personal failure, having nothing to do with the pernicious randomness of disease or outgoing tide of economic recession.

Optimism is a magnificent thing. I hardly think I'd want to go on living without it. Living hopefully does not call for optimism of the blind variety, but rather the eyes-wide-open knowledge that this sure as hell can work given what I know to be true about the world and myself. Optimism backed up by thoughtfulness, experience, and confidence is always justified, but when worn merely as a prophylactic against fear, it sets us at the roulette wheel feverishly spinning away, doomed to go bust no matter what our attitude.

Pessimism gets a bad rap and I understand that. Relentlessly pessimistic people are hard to be around unless they're able to temper it with a cynic's humor, and even that wears thin after awhile. But that doesn't mean that the fear at the heart of the pessimist isn't justified. It could always go wrong. The future is full of pitfalls: we count on our wary pessimists to point them out. Whose investment advice would you be more likely to take: the optimist or the pessimist? The pessimist's, of course, after all if they're willing to place a bet on the future, you can be darned sure they've done their homework and is not relying on the vagaries of a "good vibe."

Young children don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism, especially the very young for whom the future really doesn't exist, let alone with enough concreteness to evoke hope or fear. And sure, as they get older they quite reasonably adopt the cloak most appropriate for the occasion; dressing for instance in eager anticipation of the holidays or in fearful anticipation of the doctor's needles. Rational responses both, ones that belie the reality that the gifts are rarely as incredible as one hopes nor the pain as bad as one fears: our attitude, be it hope or fear, doesn't necessarily alter reality, but rather helps us temper our experience with reality in a way to prevent the highs from being too high and the lows from being too low.

I'm thinking of all this today in the last day of 2025 because as I reflect back on the year now past with all it's ups and downs, I can't help but think of the "curse" that is usually attributed to the ancient Chinese: "May you live in interesting times."

And indeed, I have been cursed; we have been cursed. The brilliance of this curse, of course, is that it can just as easily be a blessing, because really, who would want to live in boring times? And indeed, I have been blessed; we have been blessed.

I'm going to try this year, as a resolution, to approach the future more like a child, setting aside the dogmatism of optimism and pessimism. I will let my feelings flourish, learn what I can from them, then wearing them on my sleeve, I'll seize the day while worrying about tomorrow when it comes.

When I succeed, I will credit those who hugged me when it was dark. When I fail, I will shrug and not heap all the blame on myself, knowing that I have no control over the weather.

There is a companion curse that goes along with the famous one. It's one we habitually evoke for one another this time of year as a blessing, so take it as you will: "May your wishes be granted."

And in the meantime, however, have a fine year.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

For Auld Lang Syne

The words "for auld lang syne" translate into modern English as something like, "for old time's sake." The song we sing on New Year's Eve is a Scottish poem, written by Robert Burns in 1788, and is a melancholy farewell.

Every day, we say so long to so much, old times that will never return except as memories. Most of the time we don't really think about it in the rush and crush of life, not noticing the changes, the losses, only to be reminded of them in spurts, in reflective moments, or when confronted suddenly by something that evokes days that are gone. Sometimes what we have lost overwhelms us, like the passing of a loved one, but most of the time, we mourn our losses with something like a song, raising a glass with a tear in our eye, then moving on in hope to create some more.

I look forward to the new year with eagerness even as I know it will, like this past year, be full of things to which I'll say goodbye, something I've done 61 time already. So let's do it again today with one more toast. Let's tak' a cup o' kindness yet, for days of auld lang syne.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

"You Climbed Up There!"

"Teacher Tom, look at me!"

The boy called out from where he stood, clinging to the trunk of one of our playground cedars. He was standing on a root that raised him no more than six inches off the ground. If he had fallen, it wouldn't have been a fall.

"Baby steps" is the expression we use in moments like this: the first, tentative attempt to push the boundaries of our fear. A baby's first step is an act of falling forward, then trusting their legs to break that fall. I've had the privilege to witness several first steps and each time, the baby smiles. I don't know if it's from the thrill of accomplishment or a response to the adults who are cheering them on. I expect it's a bit of both.

The boy on the root was smiling as he called out to me. To be honest, I wasn't at first sure what he wanted me to look at so I said, "I'm looking at you!" matching my enthusiasm to his own. I knew this four-year-old boy to be intellectually precocious, but physically timid, not inclined toward what we generally think of when we worry about "risky play." It was this prior knowledge of his personality rather than my own concerns for his safety that allowed me to figure out that he wanted me as a witness to his act of courage. I added, "You climbed up there!"

As adults, we tend to be pretty good at responding to children who climb "too high," go "too fast," or play "too roughly." In fact, if you've read here for any length of time, you'll know that I think we tend to overreact, too often allowing our own catastrophic imaginations to take over. I suppose it's natural, on the other hand, that we often miss acknowledging these baby step acts of courage because they don't trigger our own fears. I mean, no one's going to get hurt falling from six inches.

Courage doesn't mean the same thing as fearless. For any act to be courageous, it must be done against a background of fear. Fear is necessary. "Complete certainty, safety, and a life of no fear is impossible," writes Brandon Webb in his book Mastering Fear. "There'll never be a point in your life where you'll think, "now's the right time, I'm totally prepared and at ease" . . . If you wait for fear to go away first, you'll never do it. Because the fear is never going away."

This boy stepped onto that root despite his fear. He thought he might be able to do it, but feared he would fall or fail or somehow get hurt. Every courageous act requires us to act in the face of this uncertainty. At some point, each of us must act without knowing, then live with the consequences. This, I think, is what defines human freedom.

It was nothing to be personally, but for this boy, this baby step was a transformative one. There is no second step without the first one. There he clung to that trunk, thrilled to be free. As the Ancient Greek historian and general put it, "The secret to freedom is courage." So we are meant to go, by both baby steps and by the giant steps of the gods, from one act of courage to the next, acting in the face of our fears, acting in the face of uncertainty. This is, in the end, what a life of purpose and meaning is all about.

As that boy stood there on his root, a girl who, like the boy, I knew to be intellectually precocious, yet physically timid, stepped carefully onto a slightly lower root beside him. The boy encouraged her, echoing me, "You climbed up there!"

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

Disappointed, Jolly, and Longing for More

My own child as well as all the nieces and nephews are young adults, which means that our Christmas Days have been evolving over the past few years into a less child-centric experience. We're here in New York to spend the holiday with our daughter. Yesterday's plan was a lazy, late morning gift exchange followed by a movie and Chinese food. 

It was all a proper NYC Christmas until we arrived at the movie theater only to be told that the showing for which we'd held tickets for months, and had looked forward to, was cancelled due to "burst pipes." That sucked. 

It didn't just suck for us. The flooding impacted most of the theater's showings for the day, which left hundreds, if not thousands of us, with the same disappointment. 

As we tried to figure out if there was another movie at another theater we could see, I watched the poor woman assigned to inform customers of the situation. She was promising refunds and handing out vouchers. Most seemed to understand, but she was also taking some abuse. Talk about sucking. This was not how she imagined things going when she came into work on Christmas morning.

The movie business was struggling before the pandemic, but then took a nosedive from which it's never recovered. Theaters are closing across the country. Turning away customers on the busiest movie day of the year really sucks for this theater's bottom line which will likely impact everyone who works there.

We ended up taking a taxi across town to see a movie we'd never heard of (A Better Man), a biopic about a pop star none of us had ever heard of (Robbie Williams), in which, for reasons never fully explained, the lead was played by a CGI chimpanzee . . . It wasn't bad. In fact, well before the chimp's fame had brought it to the predictable decent into drug abuse and alcoholism, we were once more a jolly bunch. 

I know that we weren't the only ones to go through disappointment on what is meant to be a merry holiday. Indeed, in the scheme of things, ours was an incredibly minor one compared to the disappointments of, for instance, children whose Christmas morning hopes were unfulfilled. Our disappoint was nothing compared to the disappointments of those who hoped that this year they would forge a new relationship with difficult relatives, or that their happy day would not be spoiled by bickering, or who burned the dinner. The truth is that for many of us, these big holidays are often a big disappointment, which accounts, I suppose, for much of the depression associated with this time of year.

Having a bad day is one thing. Having it against the backdrop of a day set aside for being "jolly," "merry," and "happy" is another. Even our most perfect holidays are marred, at least a little, by disappointment, because few things live up to our greatest hopes or go according to our best laid plans. There are those who tell us that we can choose to be happy, even when things go wrong, but try telling that to the kid who didn't get the toy they fully expected. As adults we can dismiss their tears as "nothing to cry about," but that doesn't make the experience of having one's hopes dashed any less painful. 

The reality of disappointment makes cynics of some of us all of the time and all of us some of the time. If we just start by expecting the worst, the theory goes, then we can at least be pleasantly surprised when the worst doesn't happen. It's a protective stance that perhaps dampens the disappointment, but it also leaves us without the anticipation, without the hope.

Anthropologist David Graeber tells us that our medieval ancestors understood this phenomenon in a way that our consumption-based economy makes difficult for modern humans to comprehend. It's natural to desire a wonderful thing, like a perfect holiday, but trying to possess it, fulfill it, or consume it is another matter. "Anyone who got the idea that one could resolve the matter by "embracing" the object of his or her fantasy was missing the point. The very idea was considered a symptom of a profound mental disorder, a species of "melancholia" . . . This leads to the interesting suggestion that from the perspective of this particular form of medieval psychological theory, our entire civilization . . . is really a form of clinical depression." We shop, we plan, we anticipate, but the truth is we always just miss our heart's desire, leaving us with an emptiness that can only be filled by . . . more shopping, planning, and anticipating. The assumption of capitalism is that we will never be sated. The goal of our medieval predecessors was far more reasonable: not to try to possess perfection, but rather to preserve our longing for it.

By the time we sat down to our dinner, we were jovially debating the strange artistic choice to make Robbie Williams a chimp. Was it distracting or inspired? It definitely makes the movie more memorable than the other myriad pop star biopics, but did it make it better? You know, exactly the kind of post cinema conversation one anticipates and even hopes for. We ordered too much food and had an extra round of drinks. We laughed and reminisced and found ourselves by the end of the evening in a holiday mood. It will, going forward, be known as the "monkey man" Christmas, the year, like all the others, that didn't go according to plan, but nevertheless followed tradition, leaving us yet again disappointed, jolly, and longing for more.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

Last Minute Gift Ideas!

We've been bombarded with "last minute" gift idea promotions since at least mid-November, but now, finally, the last minute is truly upon us. As a public service I offer Teacher Tom's last minute gift ideas for children, most of which won't even require a trip to a mall or an Amazon delivery.

Mesh produce bags.

Things that rot.

A place to leave things to rot . . .

. . . and worms to live there.

Sticks.

An old typewriter.

Concrete.

Dominoes.

Tape.

Sand.

Blocks.

Hammers.

Drills.

Boxes and balls.

Nuts, bolts, wrenches and screwdrivers . . .

. . . rubber bands . . .

. . . and put them all together.

Glue guns.

Cars.

Dolls . . .

. . . who need bandages.

Shipping pallets.

Rocks.

Water, gutters, tubes and shovels.

Paint.

Yarn.

Step ladders . . .

. . . and homemade ladders.

Tree parts.

Ropes.

Buckets.

Plants.

Junk . . .

 . . . and jewels.

Happy holidays!

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!