In late March, I achieved a life goal: I snowshoed solo around Mt. Lassen. It was a great four-day trip. It snowed heavily without wind during days two and three as I was moving over the highest part of the circuit (between 7500-8500 feet). Ah, to see the trees in the high forests piled with the maximum snow that can remain poised on each branch, each needle is a fairyland experience. Someday I might focus my mind and memories enough to describe what I find so beautiful about mountains in the winter. But I won’t talk about the specifics of the trip here. Instead, I want to share the effect it had on Chrysalis students.
The week before the trip, I told them I would try achieving a life goal that had eluded me on three earlier attempts. When I returned, I was surprised at how many of the kids asked, “Did you make it?” And when I said “yes”, I was deeply, deeply moved by the pure spontaneous joy they felt in response to my accomplishment. It wasn’t just joy for me. It was like a victory for the human spirit that included them. Their pure delight expressed how it should be. Someone’s rising higher elevates us all. We should delight in each other’s accomplishments. The kids’ responses made me realize I had lost contact with that. Maybe that is a consequence of living in a culture focused on zero sum games in which every winner requires a loser, in which a person is compared with others rather than with how they’ve grown. The simple beauty of my students’ joy brought me back to the realm of simple delight.
The second effect was that several of the kids became intrigued by the idea of a life goal. It was a new and fascinating idea. What is a life goal? How do you get them? Where do they come from? What will your next one be?
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