What you want most right now might not turn out to be what you actually want. This is a big deal when you start telling me about your hopes and dreams to go to XYZ school, and no way would you go to LMNOP school, because you want QRS for sure. You intend to write a convincing essay about that future. You want to be sound like you know. In our essay writing sessions, we do some digging under the narrative of what you want. Sometimes real personal growth lies in the other direction from what your mind has been fixated on. How do you know what you want? Let me tell you a little personal story. Way back before the towers fell, and New York City went into a post-terror slump, I knew I wanted to train to be a yoga teacher. In my final spring at Brown University, I had studied intensively with a great teacher. Everyone should be so lucky. Of all the days spent on the sweat-slick mat, I remember one particularly: after a 2 hour practice, in complete silence on the meditation cushions, a student let out a hefty fart. The whole room erupted in laughter, as if we were but 12 years-old. (This is why I love, and will always serve, 12 year-olds.) That no one chastised us, made us feel immature or small, let me know that I was in the right kind of room, with the right kind of people, reaching the right kind of enlightenment. One that wouldn't exclude the basic pleasures of human life, or frown too hard on the physical bodies we really have, in all their less than perfect moments. In New York City, I practiced near the school where I taught Latin, skipping my lunch period to get chakras cracking. When I told my exquisite instructor I was interested in doing a training, she (who is now is a full time commercial real estate agent and brings equanimity, or at least compromise, to the roots of all aggression that way) recommended an infamous "teacher of teachers", Alison West. This teacher stopped me in my tracks Over the phone, Alison's communication was Continue Reading …
teachers
Stay Present
"Stay present!" And other grating advice... "Stay Present!" has become an instruction as common as "drink your water." Such common things are sooooo easy to ignore. It's valuable to take another real look. The most common things of all (like the Common App? like Air? Like, dare I say it, subtle kindness and subtle cruelties) are often incredibly important, but they don't catch your attention automatically. Unlike, say, that absolutely aware Meerkat, pictured above. (The Meerkat is eye-candy for your odd-animal spot. If you have one.) Reader, you may not even be 17 years-old yet, hoping your college essay will magically start (or finish) itself. Or maybe you're a parent of a kid applying to college. You've surely heard people say "stay present" or its cousin instruction, "be in the moment." Maybe you don't want to hear any more generic advice. To stay present is a virtue (in some circles), and it's not easy. But it will enrich everything. No, really. My Present is Your Present (and I'm bad at writing subheadings, so bear with me!) While I write (and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite) this one blog post, and attempt to do what I am writing about, I can hear my husband, stepsons, and 15 month-old in the boys' bedroom, jamming out to Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay."-- "wastin' time" (Listen to Otis, he's so smooth. In a moment of total affection for his songs, I once told a student he was my dad. The student replied, "That's so cool!" Hmmmm.). When your aim is to "stay present", Otis croons, sometimes you have to just sit there. In our case: Sit with your self. Sit with your essay. Dig into the wildly mundane, wildly telling moment of... right now. Even if your "right now" feels pretty lame, pretty empty, pretty challenged. You get to cut right through that stuff. To the essence. The essence is NOT lame, is NOT challenged. The essence is something about yourself-- about all of us-- my present, your present, The Present-- Continue Reading …
Because I Myself Was Still Eating Sugar
A mother brought her young son to Mahatma Gandhi. Please, Gandhiji, she begged. My son eats so much sugar. I cannot get him to stop. Please, tell my son to stop eating sugar. Gandhi nodded. The truly wise ones usually take a substantial pause before responding to go within for a reality check. Then he said: OK, come back in a month. And that was a solution? Because you have to listen to what you’re told when you ask Gandhi for advice, or so I imagine—it’s not like asking a question on a forum on Yahoo groups—the mother left with her son, a bit baffled. One month later she dragged him back in. There was powdered sugar on the boy’s chin, frosting on the sleeve of his shirt, and chocolate stain near his belly button. Clearly her techniques were ineffective—the boy was wearing his rebuff as a military decoration. She stood the boy in front of Gandhi’s chair. Gandhiji, she said, desperately. I brought my son back, just like you told me to. Please tell him to stop eating so much sugar. Continue Reading …