This is a quote from Joseph Campbell. I love this quote. As an educator I find it morally uplifting. Yet, in the same public television conversation with Bill Moyers, Campbell follows this morally uplifting statement with the declarative: “The world is a wasteland.” That statement probably sounds nihilistic to the uninitiated. As a self-proclaimed ‘Campbellian’ I understand what Papa Joe (as I call him) was trying to convey. He meant to express the contrast between the world, which is itself an unending labyrinth filled with ever-evolving dangers, and the individual- left to their own devices to navigate the maze. Papa Joe knew that to live in this world and attempt to alter the course of its unfolding would be an act of Sisyphean hubris. We are not, as individuals, significant in this way. Not one among us will ever roll that boulder to its apex and manage to keep it from shifting right back down the hill. No one alters the world alone.
In truth, one can point to individuals who have altered the course of mankind’s development- but I ask you: who among them had done so without the aid or influence of another? Even Gandhi would not have made such a lasting, global impact without the thousands of individuals who walked with him to the ocean to be publicly beaten for ‘stealing’ salt. Like many before and since his time Gandhi was simply a vital human. He lived his life in such a way as to inspire others to do the same. He eventually became so influential that many buddhist and hindu sayings are often misattributed as quotes from this great spiritual leader. But Gandhi was merely an influencer, and that is what Joseph Campbell was trying to express in this quote about vitality. The person who is vital will spread vitality.
This is one of the roles of a teacher: the conjuring of vitality in the individual. Whether instructing 3rd graders on the parts of speech, or guiding thirty-year-olds through Patanjali’s sutras, the passion a teacher has for their discipline will shine through and affect their students’ lives. So, when teachers are positioned to feel: inadequate, as many evaluation measures make us feel; under-appreciated, through low wages or administrative decisions made without adequate teacher representation; or physically or mentally unprepared, as has been the case often for many of us during the Covid-19 crisis, we cannot participate in an exchange of vitality.
When we are feeling a lack in our own stores of vitality how will we contribute to the vital nature of another? Or to multitudes of others? Lately it feels like much of society is hanging back -watching from the cheap seats- while educators work to roll individual boulders up individual hills. Then, when we are inevitably crushed by our stone’s inability to sustain a defiance to gravity, the audience scoffs and calls us unprofessional. The same people who were cheering our efforts in March find only fault in our boulder-balancing efforts today.
If “The influence of a vital person is vitality,” and we allow things to continue as they are, then we shall quickly be in a vitality shortage- if we aren’t already. The world, it seems, is indeed as Campbell described: a “wasteland.” Perhaps it is our task to stop trying to alter its course. Instead, let’s all step out of the paths of our individual boulders. Let’s stop trying to fight against gravity and turn our attention towards altering the expectations society places upon our profession. We were never meant to be shouldering some of these stones. The changes we make individually could quickly work to influence and alter the expectations out here in the wasteland. After all, if we are destined to live in a wasteland, it would seem that cooperation between individuals will be vital.