It Goes On.

When asked for his philosophical view of life, the poet Robert Frost famously answered, “It goes on.”

 

There’s a lot packed into those three words. We worry about the end of relationships, the end of our lives, the end of democracy, the end of life on earth. But even in a nuclear holocaust threatening the extinction of the human species, there is a speculation that the cockroaches will live on and still inhabit the planet. It goes on. 

 

When it comes to our work life, the same truth holds. In the movie About Schmidt, the Jack Nicholson character retires and soon after, keeps coming by to see if the new guy needs his advice about anything. He makes it clear— he doesn’t. All those years and poof! “Bye! We’ll be just fine without you.”

 

In my own school, I knew that my colleagues of decades, Sofia and James, would carry on without me when I retired. I did hope they’d invite me back occasionally to play bagpipe for the Intery Mintery celebration or lead the Wrong Words Day singing. But between the post-pandemic, the sense that they’d rather continue the traditions their own way, the overall feeling in the school that I indeed became “progressively unnecessary,” life there has certainly “gone on” without me and that’s a natural progression. 

 

If these three words are irrefutable truth, how things go on and what things go on can make all the difference in the world. Something beautiful— a work of art, a school culture, a just political system— can be smashed or erased in a heartbeat by the human error of bad choices. Something toxic and harmful can be refused and lines drawn so a parents’ abuse or alcoholism does not get transmitted to the next generation. 

 

Likewise, something hurtful that we thought we solved— racism, sexism, unchecked capitalist greed— can raise its ugly head again in new forms. Something healing and beautiful can continue carried by new hands and evolve with new touches. That’s the one I’m feeling now. That all the work I—and my colleagues—put into cultivating a certain quality of community, a certain set of values, a certain way of dynamic and effective pedagogy in teaching, will continue beyond our physical presence. In the hands of others, it will invariably change and there will be different energies and nuances, but the essential spirit will remain intact and continue to evolve and prosper.

 

That is 100% true at The San Francisco School, not only in the music program carried forward by James and Sofia, but in the overall school culture carried through by the remaining veteran teachers, the six or seven alumni teachers (including my daughter!), the two alums and promising new people in administration. I still go to their concerts and plays, have subbed at least a few times a year (with a two-week stint coming up), so the personal connection continues. But again, if I never stepped foot into the school, the work that my wife and I and all our colleagues did can still be felt and gloriously so. Of course, that can change in a heartbeat, but while it’s so, it’s a cause for celebration. 

 

I also felt this at the recent national Orff Conference, where some nine teachers who had studied with James, Sofia and me presented workshops and carried forth the style we have so carefully cultivated—enticing beginnings, connected middles with clear shape and design, satisfying ends, no unnecessary talk or explanations, no Powerpoint at the center of it all and relaxed, warm feeling from the teacher presenting their authentic self. 

I still gave a workshop— a children’s demonstration— that I believed offered yet more details and nuances useful to the up-and-coming teachers, so I’m not done yet. But the dual sense of being “progressively unnecessary” and so happy to see that what my teacher Avon bequeathed to me drawing from what Orff and Keetman bequeathed to him will lives on and will hopefully continue to prosper. 

 

It's a fine feeling when “life goes on” just in the way we hoped that it would. 

May it continue!