Spring Cleaning for the Soul

Spring has sprung. The spring equinox has passed, the days are getting longer, and the winter chill is starting to thaw. Many schools are off for a week of Spring Break, and that's providing kids and families with the chance to re-charge and rejuvenate, whether they hang around for a stay-cation with long lazy mornings and cleaning out the basement or they head off for a week in Aruba. It's also the time for a little re-charging of our personal and professional lives and choices. To that end, around this time of year each spring, my AP English Lang class does a brief, non-AP unit about life and how to live it. The foundational text is a wonderful little fable by Paulo Coehlo called The Alchemist, and the unit draws in a variety of supplemental pieces designed to generate reflection from the kids on how they feel about the life they are choosing to live.

One question I ask them is whether they are "sitting on their ticket." By that I mean are they procrastinating and putting off the things they really want to do. The metaphor is a reference to beautiful anecdote from the twentieth-century American sage, Robert Fulghum, who many of us know as the author of the book/essay All I Need to Know about Life I Learned in Kindergarten. In one of Fulghum's many essays from another book, he tells a humorous story about a young woman he encountered years ago who was stuck at the airport because she was sitting on her ticket. That moment and phrase became a metaphor and guiding principle for Fulghum to always remind himself to get on with what he really wants to do with his life. 

Another bit of sagely advice that I share with my students comes from a guest spot on Oprah. It's been a few years now, but many of you may recall the story of a man named Randy Pausch who became known for his Last Lecture. The lecture from the Carnegie Mellon professor who was dying of pancreatic cancer became a viral hit on YouTube.com as well as a best-selling book. It was a bit of advice and a few principles for how to life your life and achieve your childhood dreams, and it was based on the simple idea that if "you live your life correctly, the dreams will come to you." Here's the clip from Pausch's appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show: