Being present

One habit I have is that I save phrases. What I mean is that when I read I often run across a string of words that I find particularly descriptive or engaging. I write them down. When I was a teenager I had an old stenographer's notebook in which I kept these tidbits. I have lines from books, songs, and poems. I still have that notebook, and looking back through it is like a walk through adolescence. A pretty rocky walk at times!

Now, I tend to keep my snippets on the computer. I wish I was better organized about it, but I'm not. Some are in emails, some on this blog, some are just in random word documents. Over time I have gotten less careful about attribution, even at a time when I've become more aware of the need for correct citation.

That's how I find myself running across a line I had written down recently and not remembering where it came from! I'm thinking it was a NYTimes story, but I could be wrong. I'm pretty sure it was written by someone in the medical field, perhaps even psychiatry. The individual was working, I think, in an Alzheimer's unit providing some type of care. With that big build up I'm sure you are all curious what the line was...so here it is:

"attentive at every level of human presence — not just by way of words, but through eye contact, compassionate silence, touch. "

What struck me about the line is the description of what it means to be present with someone. That it is not just about words, about what you say, but just as much about what you do when you are with someone. How do you show attention? How do you show that you are present?

I volunteer in a first grade class and there are a few ways students are asked to show their attention. One is the clapping routine. The teacher claps a pattern and students mimic it back. The idea, I suppose, is that the students have to attend to the task and focus on the teacher. Another is that students are asked to "show that they are ready" to move from one task to another. They do this by stacking their papers and workboxes in front of them and putting their heads down on the desk. Another way they are asked to show "attention."

So, as a teacher, how can I show the same "attention" to students? Do I focus on them when they are asking questions? Do I make eye contact? Do I give them time and space to think and respond to questions through a compassionate silence? How do I show them that I am ready?

Demography

I am deep in demography these days. I attended our annual professional meeting a few weeks ago, a small conference last week, and will be off to a larger conference in two weeks. I like hanging out with demographers. We are reasonable people who are mainly nice to each other. I don't know if I was drawn to demography because I think like a demographer or if I was trained to think like a demographer. I suppose a little of both.

Demographers study three main things: mortality, fertility, and migration. I fall into the mortality area. I always liked it because it was so much cleaner than fertility--you don't have to worry about intentions, desires, plans. Most people try to avoid death as long as possible and most only die once. Easy to count that way.

But, I was thinking about fertility the other day and one of my favorite demographic phrases. A well-known demographer Ansley Coale studied the decline of fertility in populations. He suggested that in order for fertility to be controlled three things had to occur. First, fertility control had to be in the "calculus of conscious choice." Second, that women had to see some benefit to fertility control. And, third, that they had to have a means to control fertility.

It is the phrase "calculus of conscious choice" that has stuck with me all these 25 some years. Before we can make any change we have to recognize it as possible, it has to be within our set of options, within our conscious mind. How many times are we blind to the options available because they don't exist for us? We simply do not see them. I think it happens a lot. Women could not imagine that fertility was even something that was possible to control. Babies just happened, how could that be within their control? In the same way we might think that some type of change is not even something we can control, not something we can exert any influence over.

But, just like fertility change, other changes can happen, too. Think about what you might be able to move into your calculus of conscious choice.