Must you win?
What is victory? What is power? Do we only accept or understand either in a win?
Victory. Power. Is it standing unmoved like a mountain or having the ability to move mountains?
Conceding. For those wanting victory or to remain in power, to concede- is this the same as surrender or possessing the power to step back and say, “Game over”? Isn’t there to great victory and power in taking position to say, “Enough”?
When I see that a student of mine is coming in weighted from the world, exhibiting this, behaviors to hint to me so, I prepare my heart for scornfulness and spite. I know it is within my realm to understand any spews of defiance and tendencies of rebellion. The student’s heart, mind, and spirit has been hardened and so, they want to take on the world.
I have grown a lot as a teacher. So young and vibrantly filled with what I thought was fierce leadership and earned authority, I never wanted to “lose” against a student challenging my status and role. I recall moments where a student would want to resist redirect or any form of suggestion to follow classroom instruction and how I wanted to quickly “win” the challenge.
I smile to think back to a student of mine who is no longer with us. There are these pair of earrings that sits inside a jewelry box (another student had given me) on my desk. In that box, those are the only pair of earrings to be found.
No one ever really knew that following our open debates, this student would give me hand-crafted beaded jewelry. One day, he kindly gave me a fan he had bought from a trip his family had made. These thoughtful gifts, as I had always took in the two years I had him, were non-verbal gestures of letting me know he trusted I had always meant well and he was safe with me each time our spirits were in conflict in class. Our open disputes merely were a channel to push his mind to make a stance and with that, push my heart to see the world from his eyes.
I have probably opened that jewelry box twice this year, imagining him looking back at me with his big smile, remembering him as I take moments to reflect on current students of mine today. I laugh and am strengthened to think he would be telling me that if I made it with him, I will make it with all these others.
There are several students I presently teach now who uniquely express themselves and yet, relatively the same as those of my former students- rather defensively in the eyes of their peers. This endlessly comes with the territory of being a teacher.
While I would not have felt the same in those moments, I am grateful for all challenges my former students have given me. I can still recall a time where that same student had waited to approach my desk until all were quietly working. Whispering, he respectfully persisted to prove himself to be in the right (again). He had no idea how spent I was from our battle (that day) and so, I cannot recall whether or not he was truly right. I just remember nodding and quietly telling him “thank you”. I recall him walking away from my desk to retreat back to his. I felt his satisfaction. I felt his peaceful victory. I held the power to give him both. I know now that’s all he perhaps really always just wanted for me to give him.
Today, I know, conceding is just as powerful if not most powerful in circumstances where I must define my victorious fights as at times when I choose to “give in”.
It is not that I am wrong where I surrender to concede. My husband will tell you after three decades, I’m still working on not feeling like I have to have the last word. (Feeling you are right is difficult to tame.)
Being right can now be an intrinsic knowing and need not always be fought for to prove victory or power. While I understand battles are faced, years of enlightenment have given me clarity of strength. I am not one to just accept and watch wrong, but I would like to think I have become wiser in my approach to object.
When I back down from a verbal challenge, conceding as a result, I now work in mastering how to speak so I may find the channel to enter one’s heart, not their battleground. That fight in them that could have battled at all cost with me and all those potentially impacted, is won by my concession. That victory and power they feel- they were in my possession to give.
Power and power tripping are two different things, I reflectively point out. My ego got the best of me very shortly in my early years of teaching. I learned quickly that staying unmoved is far from actual power of moving mountains. When I can quiet a room by either my own silence, a quick countdown, or a tap on the desk or one’s shoulder, I pass on whatever power I have to do right onto my students. Their rigidity softens and to my thanks, they move in the direction I hoped. That mountain- I uplifted. Sure. Some mountains are harder to move, but that’s why there is tomorrow when the sun sets.
Retaining and maintaining peace for all is not easy. While peace and harmony can feel like a safehaven for the majority, there are those who find quiet uneasy. Those who have prepared for war in the time of peace constantly keep a teacher like me on her toes. And yet, peace is that ongoing wanting for a room where learning and progress can be at highest achievement when disruption is at its least or full state of non-existence.
It is not the person I want to correct, but rather, their actions. I get the need to test boundaries to see at what extent one can take. I was (and while thankfully growing, still am) that child. However, each breakage just slows down movement, causing work to get back to rebuild to where we were- learning and progression. When I can get the class back to work together as one, greatest power is felt.
Just like when I write, words roll out of my tongue that I then tell myself, “Remember this one.”
Recently, a student had mentioned something about schools always having drama. Without another moment’s thought, I uttered, “Drama is a distraction from progress and success.” My mathematics room was silent. It just so happened to be the class that had the most young men facing, what I believe, inner-turmoils fighting within them to reach their greatness this year. They were processing what I had stated and in my heart, I knew, I planted a deep thought that they would take with them for a lifetime. I know. As the words rolled out, a timeline of dramatic events in my life flashed before my own silent thoughts. To my mind’s relief, I closed my thoughts to my present successes.
We all want to win. It is our human makeup to excel. We are meant to gain victory. We just aren’t good at knowing how to go about it right sometimes. Somehow I am convinced that we have become accustomed to think power equates to victory. And victory is marked by a win. And a win is that recognition in the end that, yes. You got the “W” and the other got the “L”.
As a teacher, a mother, and a wife, I realize conceding that extinguishes any further battle is an unrecognized victory. When time, pain, and destruction have been spared, who would argue that this achievement be not victory? A big “L” could represent the universal understanding of one losing. However, I claim a much bigger win that many may have not arrived to or fear to venture. The biggest winning feeling, alternatively, is that other big “L”. That truly priceless, powerful, everlasting “L”- love. When you can convince your opposition the goodness of your heart and thus, offer love and not hate- this, this is victory. This is power.
Stand like an unmoved mountain or move the most rigid mountains of all.
