l Chapter 1 Love is the answer
If I am not teaching love, I am not teaching. Or, perhaps I should say, I am teaching something else. Verlyn Smith, a career middle school educator of some 30 years experience tells his incoming class on the first day of school that he loves them. He says this repeatedly throughout the first day and reminds them thereafter that yes he does indeed love them all. He says they initially find this strange coming from a middle aged male but after a while, they themselves will ask him “Mr. Smith do you love us today?” After he has told them he loves them, he says, he is free to discipline them, praise them, and guide them through the chaos that constitutes the middle school years.
When a child or a parent first comes into my office, they may or may not say; “Do you care?” or the blunter among them will say; “You don't care.” Before any issues can be discussed and any progress made, each child wants to know that they are loved. Sometimes the word is care, sometimes the word is love but the emotion is the same.
This path differs from the cold clinical medication and diagnosed burdened field that has become counseling. In the conventional counseling scenario a “client” comes with a disorder, add, adhd, ocdc, ptsd, anxiety disorder, asperger's syndrome, bipolar disorder, conduct disorder, chemical dependency, codependency…I think you get the idea. (I’m still trying to get “humor impaired” listed but there has been no response from APA, the American Psychiatric Association for nearly 20 years now). The counselor with his arsenal of techniques, motivational interviewing, gestalt, rational emotional therapy, neurolinguistic programming, rogerian therapy......etc, his understanding of their unique life station through his cultural diversity and empathy training, the culture of poverty and today of course medication, ritalin, welbutrin....In the 1275 pages of the DSM-IV there are thousand of different diagnoses, strangely divergent ways the human condition can go wrong. There is not as Rob Brezny points out in his manifesto “Pronoia” a single entry on wellness. Nor is there a single page that says “Not Loved.”
I was sitting mostly obediently at a recent conference presentation where the presenter was enlightening us with the excel program he had designed to check off all the skills that his facilitators needed in order to run a high ropes course safely. On the face of it, his approach had merit. Certainly we wanted to know that our facilitators could act safely and had all the necessary skills. As he continued his presentation, however, my business partner began to squirm and mumble under his breath. As the presenter started to explain how he would confront his employees with their deficits and then have them create individualized improvement plans, my partner interrupted: “but then you always tell that you love them, don't you?” The presenter was momentarily startled but then continued. My partner interrupted again: “but you do tell them that they love you right.” The presenter ignored him and continued.
My partner, Bill Smith, a career military man, an Iraqi War veteran and a member of the Tenth Mountain Division was leading mountaineering expeditions when the presenter was in grade school. With his brusque exterior, he would not seem the most likely person to ask such a touchy feely question. In the field with a squad of soldiers, however, love is paramount. Men will die for someone they feel loves them.
Later that evening, I debriefed my reactions to this new way of thinking with my wife. I explained the presentation, described Bill's frustration and explained my own bewilderment. Why was I deeply disturbed at a soul level at something that seemed to make sense on the surface? My wife, a wise woman with 29 years of sobriety had an instant answer. “Well, he severed the connection between the heart and the head.”
It was indeed that simple.
A Native American medicine man who has been my mentor for some twenty years practices what he calls “heart medicine.” A conventional approach in that discipline is to look at the person who comes with a variety of maladies. The medicine person then does a ceremony and drives out the negative energy or ghosts and the person becomes well. Brad's approach is different. He introduces himself to the negative energy, “makes friends with it” and then encourages not just to leave but also to transform.
He ignores dualistic thinking.
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