On Reward

A Chopin waltz is wonderful on a long drive home; realizing that one has done what is good at one's place of departure is just as intangible. Teaching is always rewarding in its own right, I have found, and I know I have reached a sense of efficacy within it when I have random moments of satisfaction derived from untraceable but definite causes.

Watching a young adult grow and realize their own identity is full of both awe and an almost parental sense of pride: the latter because one senses innately that the person is now reaching the place of potential self-awareness and growth, the former because one knows intrinsically that that same person is both the one being taught and the one teaching. The one teaching not only reverberates the growth in the pupil, but also notices within oneself something not unlike a kind of internal psychological time-travel. Awareness has come not just from one's growth in the present moment, nor the rejoicing with the students' own growth, but also with the teacher's first awareness about the connectedness of life when they were a student themselves.

This is what it means to be rewarded: to find in oneself the benefit of one's neighbor.