Don Juan's Advice

After seven weeks without teaching, it’s time to re-start that slightly rusty engine as I return to my school while my forever colleague is away for a week. That must be why I had a dream about teaching Middle Schoolers, who came into the class and sat apart in two groups and one of them said, “You think you’re going to teach us and bring us together? We hate each other!”

 

I calmly replied, “Did you ever hear of the teachings of Don Juan?”

 

“Yeah!” shouted one of the guys. “He was that cool womanizer who could seduce any woman he wanted! Lord Byron wrote an epic poem about him and Mozart told his story in Don Giovanni! You’re going to share his secrets with us? Cool!!”

 

(Remember, this was a dream. Of course, no American middle schooler on earth would know about Lord Byron and Mozart, never mind Don Juan himself!)

 

“No!” I replied, “Not that Don Juan. This one was a Mexican Yaqui Indian sorcerer and Carlos Castaneda, the author of the book, apprenticed with him to become a shaman.”

 

“Oh yeah! I heard about that! He was going on all these mind-altering trips using peyote and mushrooms and stuff. Did you bring some for us?”

 

“Sorry to disappoint you, but the teaching I’m referring to has nothing to do with drugs or sex. “

 

“Damn!” a few shouted in unison. “We thought this was gonna be fun!”

 

“Well, it will be, but first you have to understood what I felt was one of the most important lessons Don Juan taught. By the way, it later turned out the author made most of this up and it actually never happened and it’s not clear if he ever meet a Yaqui Indian sorcerer. I felt a little ripped off when I heard that years after the book was published. But none of that diminished the power of that sentence I read.”

 

By now, all the kids were on the edge of their chair in anticipation. (Remember, this was a dream. In real life, they’d probably be slumped and murmuring “Whatever.”)

 

“Here it is,” I pressed on. “You can make yourself happy or miserable—the work is the same.”  So you can choose to keep hating each other, thinking that your group is cool and the other are all losers, or you can consider that you all have something valuable to give to the group and each of you has a shining jewel hidden inside of you that can bring light into the room. The amount of energy you spend either dismissing or accepting other people is the same, but the result is quite different. One brings misery, the other happiness. So choose wisely.

 

And keeping in mind once more that this is a dream, all the kids came together into a circle and we started music class.