Love is Consequential

A Lifelong Teacher’s Thoughts on Landscape, Routine, and Basic Foot Anatomy

For the past two weeks I’ve been in Springfield, Missouri working with a client’s team. They hired me to supercharge their cultural reset. Our main and overarching goal was to bring consistency and belief back to the thing they do best—which is serving customers at an excellent level.

When I do events like this, I arrive in town a day early to buy groceries and rearrange the furniture at the Airbnb. I’ve learned to bring along various things like kitchen tools and preferred soaps and towels since you never know how outfitted a rental apartment actually is. I never would have predicted a life where I travel around the nation with my one personal dish rack and a bulk pack of scentless dryer sheets. Landscapes, for the most part, are neutral in their intentions. They don’t want to do harm. But when I am away from home I prefer something just above that—I want something that feeds the day to day routine that brings out the best in me.   

Every day is mostly the same. I wake at 5:00 a.m. and head directly into bathroom to rinse off my face and brush my teeth. I then spend time in the kitchen preparing my cold soak cereal so it has time to get soggy. I mix together whole grain oats, golden raisins, a combination of nutmeg, cinnamon, and cardamom, multiple types of berries, and a mashup of chopped nuts and seeds. My least favorite part of the whole ordeal is chopping the nuts. I drown it all in unsweetened almond milk and give it time to steep. I’ve eaten this breakfast every day for probably close to twenty years.

I then make the bed then lay out my yoga mat and physical therapy tools. I have a thirty minute series of meditation and movements that I’ve done each day since 2020. I begrudgingly end the session with exercises to help heal my (supposed) dislocated cuboid bone. It seems to be working, but holy cow the process has been slow.

I then shower and get dressed, after which my oats are just right. Lately I’ve swapped my daily aeropress coffee for a cup of matcha tea. I then sit at the table and read whatever book I’m into as I eat. I wrap things up with affirmations and prayers, and then, because I am on-site with a client, I review my plan for the day ahead. I squeeze in a workout every day—either a run or a body weight pump—but other than that my mind is fully focused on the job at hand. Shoot, I wouldn’t be in Springfield if it wasn’t for this opportunity. I can’t let myself slide.

It’s imperative to me that my client is getting their money’s worth. When I leave, I want them to feel like their investment in me was one of the smartest things they’ve done all year. And though I pride myself in bringing this value, my goal is to give all my skills and knowledge and nuanced nitty gritty—all the things that keep my presence here (and other places) in high demand—to them. I want them to surpass me. I want to become an irrelevant resource.

I am fortunate to know my vocation. I’m even luckier for chance after chance to put it to practice. Of all the things I bring to the table, I am, at root, a teacher. No longer with a whiteboard and stacks of papers to grade, but still a stand-on-the-table sort of rip-roaring storyteller who casts spells that make you question everything while you think you’re being entertained. And it’s all a strategy—a strategy to relay ideas that stick.

My skills are no different from any good teacher’s skills. I am fluent in imagination and the subtleties of gesture. I can read a room in a glance and know, by how you move your eyes or sit in your chair, what you probably need right now, and then I give it to you. Care and tenderness are my most commonly used tools.

I don’t just lecture because that would be a total drag. Instead I get folks’ bodies a’moving while their minds are churning. My students dance with content then hum its catchy tune as they depart as they wonder what the heck just happened. I know they do this because I can see it. Their intake of info and concepts is like an artful tapping of dominoes. One moment leads to a whole lot more. What a thrill this brings me.

One of my mentors, the author Barry Lopez, wrote this in his book Crossing Open Ground: “Inherent in storytelling [i.e. teaching] is the power to reorder a state of psychological confusion through contact with the pervasive truth of relationships…”

Relationships. Not only between people, but between things. Which is to say, the landscape matters. The area around you matters. The room you are sitting in right now matters. It all resonates together. Your setting is, in fact, a character in your story.

I’ve got an uncanny knack for identifying and sharing otherwise disparate patterns that give depth to content I’ve been hired to teach. These may be patterns of thought. Or of understanding. They are often patterns of connection that make it clear why things truly matter. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that all of these patterns exist on a bedrock of love. My spotlight only points in this direction.

I’m generally hired to teach customer service. Or leadership. Or how to thoroughly fit a customer for a quality pair of running or walking shoes. I always carry around my skeletal foot prop, because sometimes I dig into foot anatomy or basic foot biomechanics. But whatever’s mean to be taught, what I’m actually teaching is how to actively and willingly nourish both ourselves and each other to promote growth, and how to do it with abandon while knowing there’s so much more at stake.

The end result of my time in a space might be an abundance of retail revenue, and that’s cool. But honestly, I’ll never claim to care much about that. My impetus to be with you and your team has more to do with looking inward as a means to realize the crucial effects outward. To take ownership of the incessant and unavoidable chain reactions and the importance of understated small details. A spoken word is actually a thousand words. It just depends on how you say it. Or think it Or how your body conveys it.

In his essay titled Gone Back Into the Earth, Lopez asks me to imaging I am rafting in the Grand Canyon. I am floating and winding through walls of ancient red rock. I look up and get chills thinking about the unfathomable years it took for the Colorado River to carve such profound striations so deep into the earth. To simply open my eyes is to witness timelessness. The scope is so vast and unfathomable that it inspires both terror and elation.

Perhaps on a ledge far above, out of my naked eye’s sight, there’s someone looking down at me with binoculars. To them I am an ant. A speck on a slightly larger, more colorful speck inching along the barely visible whitecaps. They train their lens on my raft yet have trouble keeping me in view. When they drop the binoculars and squint to see me, I disappear. Which, all at once, begs the question, What is all this for? and What’s the point? All of which is basically asking, What in my/our life is truly consequential?

This is the question humans have been asking for as long as we’ve been troubled with consciousness. And this asking, I believe, is how we stay open. As important is where we’re asking it. Our landscape is the narrative as much as are the events happening in it. The retail floor, in the case of my current client, is a resonant soundtrack that inspires feelings. To miss it is to miss everything.

I knew in high school I was a teacher. I never sought out a qualifying degree or credential. I didn’t earmark myself for a future in a classroom or campus, nor did I have any aspirations to become any particular kind of teaching thing. Why? Because it wasn’t about becoming a teacher, I was one already. Since that moment in my junior year English class, I’ve had a lot of jobs. And in nearly every profession I’ve been the person tasked to start the fires, then scramble to find fuel to make it grow. It’s what I do.

Did you know you have a total of 28 bones in your feet? Twenty six of these bones are connected to other bones, while the two pea-sized bones that sit beneath your big toe are called floating bones. Like your kneecap, these two sesamoids are embedded in soft tissue. And without them you wouldn’t be able to effectively ambulate. They are tiny. They are essential.

In each foot you also have 33 joints, 112 ligaments and tendons, and 19 muscles. You also sweat a half pint per day from each foot without doing any sort of activity. During a summer like this summer, when it’s super hot and humid, and especially so if you’re exercising, you could easily expel through your pores multiples of that amount. That’s a lot of sweat. Your body knows how to care for you and doesn’t ask permission.

I don’t say this to show off what I know or even try to deepen your knowledge. I mention it because it’s an artifact of my current focus. I can’t open my mouth right now without something like this coming out.

Yesterday I ordered an espresso at a downtown cafe and ended up having a discussion with the barista about her foot’s arches. She didn’t know that she, and every human, has three arches in each foot. The medial, the lateral, and the transverse. “And also,” I said, “Did you know your foot moves in three directions at once?” She didn’t. Which led to a conversation about a paved planet and our foot’s anatomical evolution. As we discussed this I took heed—there’s more outwardly religious people here than I am used to and the idea of a foot evolving, though scientifically sound, could stir some pots. “Thanks for teaching me something,” she said as I left. I told her I can’t help myself.

When I do what I am best at, all feels right with the world (even though in reality it remains a doggone mess). But that feeling that comes from seeing this space and the people in it light up, and from using time and place and each of our innate gifts to uplift ourselves and others, well, that’s where life happens. It’s where I want to be.

The more I do what I know I’m meant to do, the more my time with clients becomes a focused, all day meditation that floods my landscape with joy. Each so-called work event makes me better than the last one. Each teaching gig, ironically, is as much an educational experience for me as it is for others. Perhaps the best teachers are also the best learners? I’ll need to think on that.

This particular time in Springfield is over on Saturday. I am a fuller person for having been here to create and feel the love and potential and growth and unforgettable moments with friends and strangers in this landscape.

And hey, if I’ve learned anything through the years, it’s that this can be true anywhere. It’s a choice. And I choose it. I choose love.