Sadness

Lately, when I hear or see others talking about bad things that have happened to them, I feel such profound sadness. Normal reaction, but....the depth of my feelings is different than it used to be.

Even more surprising is my feeling toward the bad guys. Along with feelings of anger and disgust, I often recognize feelings of sadness creeping in. Sadness for whatever it was that robbed a fellow human being of his humanity. How does that happen?

I remember when I was teaching with our junior high alternative program and we had a twelve year old student who came in with his mother. While sitting in our office enrolling her son, the student's mom said something that made her son mad. He -- her twelve year old son, jerked his own mom by her hair and drug her out of the office, kicking and punching her all the way. A twelve year old child. How does that happen?

When one of my favorite supervisors was retiring, he called me in his office to say good-bye and to tell me to never, never, never make the mistake of thinking that any of the students could ever care about me. I remember him saying that if they couldn't care about their own mamas, they sure as hell weren't going to care about me. And....I remember him saying that if he heard I had gotten hurt by being sentimental and forgetting what I'd been told, he would personally come back and kick my a**. How can you teach in environments like that?