I commute an hour and a half each way to work. That’s a lot of time on the road, so I have to put it to good use. My son is awake for the afternoon drive, and our routine is listening to Star Wars music, practicing Spanish, and then listening to the Sing 2 or Encanto soundtrack. I will also get the rundown on how many large trucks, busses, or construction vehicles we have passed by on our way home. The mornings are usually mine because he often sleeps, so I get to listen to audiobooks or podcasts. Speaking of audiobooks, I just finished listening to one that I thought was profound. It is called The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield.
The book discusses the importance of the muse during the creative process. The muse is the creative energy that inspires one to make something seemingly out of thin air. He covers all the bases on what the muse might be: a certain state of mind, literal energy that we tap into like an antenna, spirits, angels, etc. Regardless of the source, this creative force needs to be respected with routine. One must do the work everyday. When people ask me the process of how I invent games that integrate with classroom subjects, my answer to them has always been the muse, even before I read this book. I say it half-jokingly, but I can’t ignore the fact that some ideas literally just pop into my head effortlessly, and sometimes it doesn’t feel like it was my thought in the first place, that it was given to me (by the muse).
However, there are two things that consistently engage my creative process and wake the muse. Number one, I have a lesson in mind, and often literally a material in hand. If there is a concept I am trying to replicate in the classroom, I will stare at the material, play with it, look over diagrams, and think hard about the “movement” that lesson can inspire. These kernels of ideas pop into a bigger unified game. The second thing to awake the muse is pressure. When I check in with an elementary teacher in the morning to ask them what they are studying, especially in science or culture, they may say something that I don’t have a lesson for. The mental stopwatch starts, I only have a couple hours to create something from scratch, and this pressure gets my mind working. The worst is when I feel pressure during a lesson, especially when something is going wrong. Even though I have never tried stand-up comedy, I liken the feeling to bombing on stage. It’s not a feeling anyone ever wants to feel. If I can’t fix the game mid-lesson, you better believe I am going to spend every waking moment thinking of ways to make the game better for tomorrow.
I remember listening to an interview with James Hetfield, and someone asked him how he wrote his songs. Did he write lyrics first, and then create music to fit the mood? Or did he have a song, and based on the emotion it unearthed, he wrote lyrics to match it? His answer was (usually) music first, with fragments of lyrics he would insert in where he knew they belonged. This was also how the band Rise Against described their process. I believe Chris Cornell from Soundgarden was also a music-first songwriter. The most famous lyric-first songwriting team must be Elton John and Bernie Taupin. When it comes to making lessons, I usually start with the classroom concept first, and then I try to fashion a game around it, or use an already established game and tweak it for my purposes. You could say I’m a classroom-lesson-first physical education teacher, which I’m sure would sound blasphemous to many PE colleagues out there.
Coming back to the War of Art, another large part of the book has to do with a concept called resistance, or the internal force that keeps us from doing the work we know we should be doing. Procrastination. Rationalization. Addiction. These are just a few of the things that reside under the umbrella of resistance. They say money is the root of all evil, but after listening to this book, you might be persuaded to change your mind. I certainly know when I am succumbing to the powers of resistance. My main form of anxiety stems from not working on what I know needs to be worked on. When I succumb to resistance, it usually comes from not being able to start because I see the proverbial mountain of work in front of me. I convince myself that if I’m going to start climbing the mountain, I need everything to be perfect. The cure to this procrastination is to just start, because overcoming the inertia is the hardest part for me. Other times, when I have completed what I set out to do, I realize I just created (a lot) more work for myself. It feels like I’m battling a hydra. The only thing I can do is remind myself that little by little, great things can be made. The work accomplished today may not seem like a lot, but if I look back at how much I have accomplished over a year, that is a whole different story.
While my resistance typically is overcoming inertia, for many others, they have a very different origin of resistance. Pressfield believes that most people’s resistance is that they are afraid, especially at the crossroads of whether they are going to undertake that book, business venture, or art. They are specifically afraid of success. They are afraid of the responsibility that is rightfully theirs when they follow through with their dream, which when realized, would change the world for the better. This fear of success often times is manifested as self-sabotage. Other people never start at all. I remember when I was first deciding on whether I would publish these Montessori Physical Education lessons. I had mixed feelings, which included imposter syndrome, that people wouldn’t care, that integration was an inferior method to teaching PE. I had to remind myself that I was in a unique position to create these types of lessons, and that it might be true that people would not care, but I had to find out for myself. I had initial data that suggested that integration may be a promising method of teaching PE, but I had to take it further. Something that Pressfield said is that you know you are doing the right work if you are not dependent on the approval of others, and you would continue your work without any adulation. This certainly feels like a trait that most teachers have. While praise and rewards feel nice, almost every teacher does it “for the love of the game.”
On the tombstone of the author Charles Bukowski, it famously says, “Don’t Try.” At first, you might surmise that he is saying don’t even try, but I think he is actually going the Yoda route, “There is no try. Only do, or do not.” What we do as educators is convince our students to do what they are good at and what they love to do. But not everyone loves everything, so how do we get through to students putting up resistance? Student will ask, “When am I ever going to use this?”
What will you say?
Our answer should be, “I don’t know.”
Not because we don’t know the real world application, but because we can’t see the future, specifically what the future of that student is. We don’t know how their life is going to go. Our mission is to give them the maximum amount of opportunities. The more they know, the more possibilities they will have in life, which will improve their chances of finding their calling. Theoretically, someone could never find their calling because they don’t know what they needed to know to produce the thing that would make them happy.
While that is a tragic thought, the War of Art ends with a supreme message of hope. When someone shares their gift, they literally make the world a little better. It is impossible to measure the contribution that your work will impart, but even if it makes one person’s life better, it was worth it. The best part is that the production of the work makes the creators life fulfilling too. Obviously, the more people we reach with our gifts, the bigger the positive influence we create in the world. This is why teaching is such a vital profession. Like a chain reaction, every positive impact we have with our students pays it forward. If we are the reason someone else finds their calling, we are indirectly responsible for all the good that person brings to fruition. As this school year is coming to an end, take a moment to appreciate the good work that you are doing, and to realize that the world is becoming a better place because of you.