Back to Bark

     One of the first lessons from Nature is that every living thing that exists  lives because it has developed a resilience, a system for protecting itself, a system for perpetuating itself.  If it's true of trees and hummingbirds and elephants, it must be true of me.  The great teachers through the ages have put emphasis on the importance of the individual’s recognizing in himself/herself natural resources for survival. Buddha, for example, said freedom comes when we follow the natural goodness of our own hearts. The stories about Jesus’ life show that he honored and respected the selfhood of the people he encountered and encouraged them to recognize their own worth. It's a good thing... and as my friend Ben says, the Good in us is the God in us. Nelson Mandela said, “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” He said in many ways that he could not have survived if he had not found the resources within himself to conquer fear. Albert Einstein said, “True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness. What they are all saying is that we find in ourselves the resources necessary for surviving, for going on.

     So back to bark... tree bark.  Those towering redwoods grow as tall as they do because at the very beginning to whatever genus it belongs survival began to be built into its process of growth. Back at the very beginning in some long-ago time of everything that lives today there was a lot of hit-and-miss, many starts that didn’t go on, that died... but some of the starts had something that enabled them to survive in whatever environment living had begun... survived long enough to reproduce and pass on to a subsequent generation whatever it was that made survival possible, and over years, thousands and millions of years, the type of living thing that it was becoming changed... adding new forms and strategies for survival until now, still developing, still moving forward in time and living, consciously or unconsciously the organism protects itself, persists... because it has something.  Among many other systems, trees have bark that helps them survive.  Of course, catastrophes happen, but mostly catastrophes take out one or a few of many individuals leaving others to survive and reproduce.  Trees have bark, protective skin.  What I've said here is actually all I need to know about bark.  I'm not a botanist and don't need to be one.  I don't need to know much about how bark does what it does, but I need to respect it’s ability to survive.  It's a mystery that botanists explore.  It's a mystery that I don't need to understand... but I stand in awe of what I don’t understand.  

     Now that I think about it, I recognize that there was something about me, in me, that made me a better-than-average teacher.  Now I am a retired person expected to answer "nothing" when asked, What do you do? I’m guessing that some people assumed I was successful because of my good formal education... that coupled with  a record of positive work experience.  It was something else... something that couldn't be written into a resume, something that couldn't be articulated in a person-to-person interview.  Here's what I think it was:  When a student or a teacher or a parent or just-about-anybody crossed my path, it was/is in my nature to try to recognize and respect and encourage what makes survival possible for that individual. Whatever it is that makes survival possible is not always quantifiable. It's mostly a mystery. Everyone is a mystery to be respected and appropriately encouraged and enabled.  

     There are programs and strategies and "instruments" we use to identify and "measure" an individual's bark, but exactly what it is that makes a person resilient is to some extent always a mystery. Don't get me wrong and think I don't appreciate the value of psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors.  Of course, I do... but what I like to see first in persons in the so-called helping professions is demonstration of respect and awe regarding every person's "bark."

...more on this subject later.