Disillusionment

It's that moment when you realize that you're naked, that moment when you start looking around for some leaves to cover up your shame, or when you first read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and discover that Columbus isn't worthy of the regard which our elementary school teachers held for him, or when you wake up one morning as an adult, knowing full well and too late that not all adults know what the hell's going on.

It's when you first learn that the earliest manuscripts of the Bible are copies of copies of copies of copies, transcribed not my professionals, but by those few educated amateurs who wanted to send a letter on to a friend across the Jordan. It's when your ideals become sacrificed to the God of pragmatic solutions, when you see that both parties are being danced by the puppet strings of finance, when you travel to Europe or Australia and realize that people there are just the same as people here, just people trying to get theirs and get by. It's when you look back at the eons of natural selection, the light years between the stars, the weight of history on your shoulders, the systemic social and economic inequalities which grow like a cancer, or the side-effects from the well-intentioned federal chemotherapy. It's when you start asking yourself, if we never fell in the first place, why do we need to be saved?

It's when you let yourself entertain the idea that God might never have existed at all, and instead of sadness or fear, you feel comforted.

It's when you feel like all of civilization is a backseat driver with nobody at the wheel or feel like the education system is broken, and people are simply pulling levers, throwing switches, and beating it with wrenches, hoping something good pops out of the other end. It's when you realize that you simply can't get through to some students, that the biggest effect you will have on some of their lives is the kindness you show them, not their understanding of Newton's laws or their chances of graduating high school. It's when you realize that, like any other skill, teaching requires a lot of practice, a lot of time, that you won't be great right off the bat, that some lessons are going to flop, some projects won't be worth the time, and some days will simply be hard.

But there is something to be said for taking off the blinders, opening our eyes, waking up, and pulling back the curtain. The world has always just been the world. Nothing changes over night; only our perception does. But that's no reason to give up on it or throw in the towel, to take your ball home or shutdown the government. That's no reason to give up hope. Little differences add up. Long hard looks into the abyss might stir our deepest fears, but when the abyss starts gazing back, at least you can see its face, and, maybe, land a nice right hook across its jaw. Disillusionment can only last as long as we deny reality. Ideals, like Newton's laws, are only models of a perfect world. Get your hands dirty, plant something, work with your neighbor, breathe the fresh fall air in deep through your nose, wave at the driver who lets you in, smile, laugh, love, endure.