blogs/brentspodek

Over the course of the Days of Awe, different members of our community taught us about people in their lives who embody certain middot, or character traits. As part of our communal study of Musar, or character development, we are focusing on Kindness. These are the words that Joshua Kaye shared about his high school Headmaster, Mr. Hearn.                          --- Rabbi Brent Chaim Spodek

I learned about the importance of being able to receive kindness from my high school Headmaster, Mr. Hearn.

I could talk about how Mr. Hearn is a kind person. He is, to a practically Mr. Rogers-like degree.  But what would be the point of praising someone for what comes naturally to them? What I want to talk about is how his decision to lead through kindness, made a difference for me.

As a student in Texas, Mr. Hearn hated school.  He experienced a culture of routine cruelty among students.  The teachers seemed emotionally removed. He felt school was like a machine through which children were pushed, and allowed to sink or swim, in an atmosphere of suppressive competition. 

And yet Mr. Hearn dared to become an educator, and to dedicate his professional life, here in the achievement-oriented Northeast, to making sure it would be different for the students and teachers in his charge.

Mr. Hearn lays it out, in his understated way, like this:

We have sought to create a safe environment in which a student could examine his strengths and weaknesses honestly, with the guidance of a supportive teacher.

In our school, values are at least as important as academic achievement. The two values that we honor most are honesty and kindness. Those virtues seem to cover most situations that arise.

Our school serves many students who have been disconcerted by their experiences in middle or secondary education. Students new to the school are both surprised and disarmed by its atmosphere. Perhaps the greatest gift we provide our students is the recognition of how greatly we value who they are.

I should explain that this was the third high school I attended.  By the end of my sophomore year I'd made a complete mess of my academic career at High School Number 1.

Which landed me at High School Number 2, a boarding school for self-destructive teens.  That school had high expectations of its students, academically but especially emotionally. All of us arrived at the school in various degrees of acknowledgment that we were in dysfunction, and we were there to support each other in taking charge of our lives.

We were expected to adopt a posture of often brutal, sometimes humiliating self-examination, as well as confronting each other to root out self-destructive thinking.  Psychiatric medications were considered a crutch and totally prohibited.

It's not a great exaggeration to say that every day there was like a mini Yom-Kippur. To give you a sense, we took inspiration from the Daytop philosophy, which goes like this:

I am here because there is no refuge, finally, from myself.
Until I confront myself in the eyes and hearts of others, I am running.
Until I suffer them to share my secrets, I have no safety from them.
Afraid to be known, I can know neither myself nor any other,
I will be alone.
Where else but in our common ground can I find such a mirror?
Here, together, I can at last appear clearly to myself,
not as the giant of my dreams,

not as the dwarf of my fears,
but as a person, part of a whole,
with my share in its purpose.
In this ground, I can take root and grow,

not alone anymore, as in death, but alive to myself and to others.

If I took away one thing from this experience it's the idea that I - and I alone - am responsible for my own attitude and conduct, and that if I apply myself, these are entirely within my control.

This is a good philosophy, but a stern one, and one it's possible to take too far.  At some level I'd begun to believe the only authentic way to care about someone is to rebuke them for their personal shortcomings and their self-deceit. I had begun to internalize that leniency was a form of disrespect. 

So, that was my state of mind when I left High School Number 2 after 13 and a half months of this 'miniature Yom Kippur'.

I was admitted to, and my parents gave me a choice between, two schools. One, a nationally competitive, ivy-league prep school, and the other… a young and tiny school with few assets and more modest academic claims, what appeared to be an extremely flexible dress code, and where every single student walked around with a practically giddy smile on her face. My parents and I agreed that the choice was obvious.  Imagine their surprise and chagrin when MY obvious choice was Mr. Hearn's school.

I understand my parents' skepticism. The injunction to 'catch a child doing something good and praise him for it' often seems to get truncated to 'catch a child and praise him for it'. Truth be told, I thought at the time that I chose Mr. Hearn's school because my need for relief from pressure exceeded my need for self-respect.

Sometimes when we have high expectations of ourselves, we come to distrust kindness.  We know we aren't as smart or hardworking as we should be. We haven't achieved enough.  We're not worthy.

How can we trust kindness, when we haven't earned it? 

And in our darker moments we wonder:

Are those who appear to cheer us on, actually mocking us instead?  Is kindness a mask for pity, or for lowered expectations?

Or, here's a scarier thought - suppose the person praising us means it sincerely?

Have they been taken in by the illusion of competence or intelligence we weave around ourselves, rendering us that much more alone?

Or does the fault lie with them - are they just not very discriminating? Maybe we shouldn't value their opinion.

I couldn't point to any specific moment it happened, but in the course of those months, Mr. Hearn and his school began to wear down those defenses.

I know, because at graduation, I discovered that Mr. Hearn's tradition was to speak about each of the graduating seniors, and when it was my turn, I felt nothing but trust and pride and gratitude for the insight and praise he offered.

Daytop got the conundrum right: "Afraid to be known, I can know neither myself nor any other; I will be alone". But uncompromising honesty by itself is not sufficient to untie this knot; that takes, also, the experience of kindness, the willingness to look past the warts that are sometimes the only thing we see in the mirror.

See, it's not true what I said at the beginning.  There IS a point in praising someone for what they naturally are.  There is a point, because it is kind.

Said Hillel, Im Ein Ani Li, Mi Li? 'If I am not for myself, who will be for me?' My wish for all of us, this year, is when someone is for us anyway, that we can get out of our own way enough to accept it. 

G'mar Tov.