On Teaching: "Getting"

I realized this morning that, as I go through the various activities that life presents, I am almost always thinking, “What will I get out of this?”, when a more healthy thought would be, “What will everyone get out of this?” After all, I don’t exist as an isolated, separate entity that can “get” things for itself (although I regularly fall into that hypnotizing belief). Rather, I am an integral part of a seamless, eternal event called “the universe”. (It’s significant that the prefix uni- means “one”.) Anything that happens during a day happens, not to “me” alone, but to the entire universe. Since the universe is like an endless ocean and I am one wave in that ocean, worrying about what I will “get” out of some experience is not only silly, but crazy. In each moment today, the entire universe will “get” exactly what it should get, must get, and needs to get. This truth can definitely apply to my teaching. During each class, instead of wondering how “I” am doing as a teacher, I should be wondering, or appreciating, how the class is doing, how the school is doing, how the world is doing, how the vast galaxies are doing. Instead of seeing my classes as local, isolated events, I should look upon them as they really are – temporary waves in the vast ocean of life. This outlook would surely cause a change in my entire attitude during class. I would be transformed from a fretting, nit-picking, controlling teacher, to a teacher who is totally relaxed because he knows the universe is doing precisely what it must be doing. I would constantly feel the reassurance that my students and I are getting exactly what’s best for us, because that’s the way the grand universe never fails to operate.