Westen wasn’t six months old when he went on his first camping trip. On his second birthday he got his very own sleeping bag.
Nine years later and that bag has kept him cozy in campgrounds from Michigan to Georgia, music festivals from Maryland to New York, sleepovers with homeless families at Aldersgate United Methodist Church, sleepless nights with friends, and a wedding in Pennsylvania.
As we prepare to celebrate his eleventh birthday, cancelled camping trips and music festivals dot the calendar. I don’t know when or where the next overnight adventure will be, but I know we’ll be ready.
I don’t know how you humans do it. We hardly left our property for three days and it tore at our minds and emotions. Easter holiday, rain storms, lots of Lego, and a Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone audiobook conspired to keep us inside, but they weren’t enough to keep us sane.
A small errand got us out after solving a dead battery (even our transportation had gone mad with inaction). We bought some junk food (unheard of in our recent immuno-boosting frenzy) and aimed to play in the sun. We trolled neighborhood schools and public parks for a secluded playground to enjoy out of sight of snitches. We ended up with a beautiful patch of green, bags of chips and pretzels, and all the sunshine we could absorb. My sons rolled down hills, climbed trees, and abused dandelions. All in pajamas and sandals. We wrestled and I wondered just how many days I had left before these two will be overpowering me at will.
We found some new spots to explore in adjacent neighborhoods and picked up a pizza to watch the Lego Masters finale at my girlfriend’s place. After a week without TV (post coming on that), it was a fine way to return to the boob tube.
Adventure is a call that we ignore at our peril. Even if just a bike ride down a new avenue, our spirits crave the unknown. I learned today that I must be intentional in feeding that craving in isolating times.
We listened to the entire first Harry Potter book today?! More than 9 and 1/2 hours while we did little more than build Lego and eat meals.
Highlights included a team effort in recreating one of our favorite Jamie Wyeth paintings.
We also had a great surprise when more Lego appeared at our door in the form of a prize my elder son had won in a remote building contest.
Many thanks to Kids’ Ketch for the contest and for judging my son’s build the winner in his age group (the dreaded 10-14 range of Master Builders).
My sons built all kinds of things and helped me with a massive family creation that will feature some of the favorite activities we are currently missing. We’re experimenting with new techniques and pushing our engineering and creative minds.
I missed my shower completely yesterday, marking the first slip up in my challenge regimen. I’ve been consistently doing three rounds of Wim Hof’s breathing technique and at least 2 minutes under a cold shower every day since April 2nd. I’ve tried morning and night, with my sons and solo, with varying breaks and workouts, and indoors and out. I stopped timing my breathing retention as that was a distraction that hampered my performance.
It seems to always bring me what I need, a charge to start my day or a blasting away of the day’s detritus.
One notable exception was when I first tried to do the breathing outside with my boys. They were fidgety and wild with their breathing and I let it get to me. I quickly adjusted and have learned to enjoy their enthusiasm while, at once, they become more disciplined.
One of my favorite places to be after a long day of ups and downs is with my boys as we write, build, draw, and collaborate on all manner of creations long into the night.
I’m a better home educator when I know what I don’t know. That’s the space where I can get curious with my sons and discover alongside them, modeling the paths toward knowledge.
I’m living in that space now. Information about the biggest event in my lifetime is changing and contradictory at every turn. I’m teaching myself to embrace the uncertainty and remember that it is the place where we discover the most truth.
We haven’t “homeschooled” in years. Before my wife died, we were trying to figure out how to explain our educational philosophy briefly. “Unschool” fits by definition, but denotes a negative. Although we intentionally discarded many of the assumptions of twentieth century schooling, our focus was not merely against the status quo. We were focusing on a love of learning fueled by our love for each other as a family. We discovered that our philosophy was greater than educational, it was holistic. Or it aspired to be, at least. We came up with “learning lifestyle.” It’s not very good as a conversational shortcut; but then again, nothing in the realm of home education lends itself to shortcuts.
Two years after losing my wife, I was embracing child-led learning and ambition more each day. My sons continued to train in jiu-jitsu and desired to compete in tournaments, where they learned how tough winning and losing can be. They took theater classes and learned discipline, history, narrative, and the nuts and bolts of production. This led to a taste of bigger stages and an urge to pursue professional acting, so I took them to an open audition where they earned a spot on a talent agency roster. Road trips, nature hikes, museum meanderings, gymnastic classes, quidditch…the adventures were countless.
Then the restrictions of governments in response to fears surrounding a novel coronavirus shut down all of our pursuits.
Our Learning Lifestyle changed over a course of days. The grounding consistency of training sessions at Elevated Studios, the new challenge of classes at Olympiad Gymnastics, hosting a growing Lego Club in our home, church services and Sunday School, and the excitement of getting ready for their first professional acting auditions…all gone.
For four weeks I have sought some reordering of our lives. Most of that time has been in search of meaning. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” I was searching for the wrong why. I wanted to know why the world had gone mad with irrationality, forgetting that the world had never been rational. To expect that now was my own madness.
The why I need is, “Why the Learning Lifestyle?”
The answer is within me, in need of revisiting, refreshing, and retooling. It’s exciting and scary to work on the fundamentals, especially when you’ve already built so much on the existing paradigm.
I see a lot of people concerned with the actions of others. You cannot control others. This attempt to restrict free movement and free speech is creating a trauma that has already damaged society.
I am uplifted by Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s quote:
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.”
I have been using the term “bullies.” It is an unfair label. It is my reaction to the bullying tactics almost universally employed by those who act to enforce government mandates through coercion and shame. These tactics are fed and driven by fear. That line between good and evil shifts in each heart as Fear and Love move within us.
Solzhenitsyn reminds us that even the most fearful heart can shift back to a loving place.
Today I’m praying for Love. Firstly, my own. I will feed my body good food, exercise, positive and powerful information, quiet, gratitude, and self-love. I will explore new places in my mind as I too am fearful of the social consequences of adventuring to new physical places.
I pray for compassion and healing.
Prayer is active. It orients your body toward the good.
Go inward, find that big ball of Love that isn’t getting enough attention, spend some time with it.
“Digging for Courage” started as my floundering for a COVID-19 theme. I was lost in the confusion and hoping to find what I needed in writing.
On April 1st I heard Russell Brand speak with Wim Hof. I had heard of Hof from my sons’ Ripley’s Believe It or Not books and a conversation with Stephen Plyler, their Brazillian jiu-jitsu mentor at Elevated Studios.
Hof’s testimony about his ability to defend against disease was compelling. Couple that with learning that his journey began when his wife committed suicide and I was ready to explore what he was offering.
My journey is at once spiritual, psychological, and physical. They are not separate in my quest. Tonight, as I lied on my back under a nearly full moon with my sons by my side, I let the air out of my body and stared into the cloudy sky. I didn’t just contemplate the infinite, I felt it pass over, carrying me along.
Shortly after, I stepped out of a hot shower and turned the water cold. I eased back under the water and breathed into a standing prayer position. I thanked God for my health and safety and for giving me a body primed for my crazy endeavors. I thanked Him for my sons, my angel of a girlfriend, and my late wife.
As I write that, I thank God for a heart that can hold these gratitudes and loves at once.
Breath is spirit. It gives us access to ourselves and is a conduit to the Divine.
It was a day more of preparation than action. As unschoolers, it’s not unusual for a Monday to be a prep day. Although, recent events have made arbitrary divisions of time more irrelevant.
We slept in, cleaned up the backyard, filled the bird feeders, set up a ninja rope course, did 3 rounds of Wim Hof Method breathing together in my bed, and admired this evening’s Pink Moon.
My sons also got to work on their second box fort, a movie theater in our living room.
Our lazy days can be rather productive. Tomorrow we’ll figure out if the ground is too soft for a tether ball rig and try to make an outdoor training area for jiu-jitsu, yoga, boxing, and general physical insanity.
