Weird

Do you remember how that life yearned out of its childhood for the "great"? I see that it is now going on beyond the great to long for greater. For this reason it will not cease to be difficult, but for this reason too it will not cease to grow.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

"This book is just... WEIRD!"

I look up from Haroun and the Sea of Stories, hearing this breezy sigh of exasperation from the back. Glancing around my classroom, I see many furrowed foreheads, hunched shoulders, and chins leaning in irritation on fists, all these fierce faces glaring at me. Looking back at the book, where I see a description of a water-walking weed-being called a "Floating Gardener," I consider for a moment before replying. As I consider, the murmur gains more force, is echoed around the room:

"Yeah, it's weird."

"Too weird."

"Why do we have to read this, anyway?"

"Why can't we just vote as a class and pick our own book?"

"Why, Ms. D? Why are you doing this to us?!"

I smile at them to mask a moment of panic. Yes, I had expected this. I knew when I chose an allegorical fantasy about censorship, Islam, and the value of stories, that there would be rebellion. I remembered the state of many young imaginations, lulled out of existence by Google image searches and online video games, which would not respond well to the demand that they picture a blue-mustached genie, giant robotic bird, or this recent floating gardener. I am even prepared to agree with them this morning, that the book is weird, and that they are right to identify it as such. In later classes, I will be better at preparing them for the plunge into a fantasy city that they must take today, but it's still early on Monday morning, and I had forgotten how strange all of this sounds when it's unfamiliar.

"So, just to summarize," I begin in a break of complaints, "You don't like this because it's weird. Am I hearing you?"

"Weird!" the first voice reiterates.

"So you're uncomfortable? You're reading this and it's not what you get or what you like?"

"Weird!"

"Hmm," I shrug. "That's OK."

"OK?" the crowd cries. "But we don't like it!"

"Maybe not. In fact, maybe it's better that you don't like it."

How is this possible? I hear them asking, though for once they are stunned enough not to verbalize their outrage. I still hear it, though, in the silence, as they fight back against the counterintuition of my words. How can be OK to do something that we don't like? What about that is OK? We don't like it. We don't want to do it anymore.

And I'm not judging their logic. God knows--really--I've used it myself. Blurry edges and shaky scaffoldings are as uncomfortable to me as to anyone; I simply don't encounter the unfamiliar in literature as often as my students. These things visit me outside the classroom, where they are seldom my first choice of company. I have a hard time seeing myself choosing a book equivalent of doubt, or trying to slog through a chapter of confusion, simply because some teacher somewhere told me it was good for me. But I have begun this lecture on perseverance, so I suppose I have to finish it.

"It's OK not be comfortable while you're reading. Remember? I told you this would happen. This is hard stuff, not easy. And you're right: it's weird. And out here in the weirdness you're growing. Learning to imagine strange things. Trying to figure out this wacky allegory that sounds like it's written for kids but is really, really deep and meaningful on a level that you, as teenagers, can understand now. You're already asking the central question of the book! 'What's the use of stories that aren't even true?' That's fantastic! Keep asking. Maybe we'll know before the end."

It's not the answer they were looking for, or even an answer at all. I can only hope that they feel heard, and take comfort in my assurance that this is difficult, instead of the well-intentioned but demeaning teacher assurances of "Oh, this is no problem, kids!" In the end, I'm giving them the same words I am repeating to myself: Be present in all circumstances. In rainy commutes as well as golden sunrises. In ambiguity as well as certainty. Pay attention, because this wilderness of oddity is where the growing happens.