I have a student who often causes me much room to pause and contemplate. (mostly because I must pause in order to restrain myself from strangling him.)
I contemplate him often because he is such a paradox to me. He is such a rebellious little guy yet he has this great potential for sensitivity and helpfulness.
So what does any of this have to do with wisdom? A good majority of my other students want to be like him. I see them swarming around him like little bees and he often complains about them following him around. I see them imitating him and copping his little attitude.
What makes them like him so much? I wondered if it is because of his knowledge. He has a 17 year old brother. He knows things beyond the average 2nd grader. Even in the way he carries himself. Most of my students are awkward and goofy. He is just cool and at times I think calculating. Do they want to be like him because our desire for knowledge is in innate? Our desire to fit in and be cool is innate? What is the draw?
I admit that while I want to strangle him, I can't help but like him.
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2 comments:
That's funny. I've known kids like that. Actually, my older brother's kinda like that. He had his own little mafia in elementary school -- charged kids to use the water fountain -- if anyone messed with him, he'd get Duggy Owens to sit on them. Haha! But my brother wasn't a bully, though. Never pushed kids around or threatened anyone. He's always just been charismatic, I guess. No matter what kind of people he's around, he seems to exude the kind of cool that makes people want to impress him (maybe it's that he doesn't come across as trying to impress them).
Unfortunately, I think a lot of his attitude comes from his quasi-nihilistic perspective (I say "quasi-", because I don't think he REALLY believes half the stuff he says -- he's agnostic, btw). So he takes his carefree-ness too far. Just thinking about it now, I think that that kind of attitude is attractive for two reasons -- one good, one bad. First the bad: as sinners, we all have rebellion inside us, so the idea of carrying ourselves like we're king of the world is tasty to us. In other words, the primordial sin of pride that remains in our old selves (speaking of believers) delights in this sort of self-sufficient 'cool'. But then there's also a little nugget of good, I think (after all, sin must always pervert the good). A carefree attitude is good, IF the reason your free of care is that you've cast it all on God in faith. When someone is carefree because he has faith in himself, or because he just doesn't care, then he's a self-idolater and a practical atheist.
My brother's also like your rebellious student in that he's often inexplicably kind and generous. That's actually one of the main reasons I don't think he's as nihilistic as he'd like to be.
:) Thanks for commenting.
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