Teaching is love

And why you should never vote (or date) someone who's mean to dogs, children and old people

I’m not a person who generally follows national politics because, let’s be honest, for a long time, it’s been so dismal. These last two weeks, though, have sort of been a non-stop joy-fest. I guess, like a lot of people out there, I didn’t realize how very hopeless I’d become. Or bored. I don’t know. I was going to vote for Joe, obviously, but I couldn’t generate a lot of excitement about it.

Then—BOOM! KAMALA! And—KAPOW! TIM! I’m excited again. I’m scrolling Threads (not Twitter, for obvious reasons) and I’m laughing and crying, just like promised in every movie trailer from the 80s. I am into the Big Dad Energy. I am loving seeing a (let’s be honest) sort of dorky Midwestern guy getting so much love. I am loving seeing the whole country notice that the Midwest exists. Yeah, we’re a thing. We’re still here. Any literary agents or editors looking to capitalize on the rediscovery of the Midwest, I wrote this short story collection about it. Just saying. Hit me up.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the pictures of Tim Walz with his cat. And Tim Walz with other cats. And with dogs. I saw a video of him talking to dogs with his “dog voice.” You know dog voice. And cat voice. And baby voice. The video pointed out how difficult it is to imagine Trump doing a dog voice. Or Vance. They do not seem to me like the kind of people who take joy in animals. Or babies. Anyone remember that bit in the movie Tin Cup where Kevin Costner’s character keeps telling Renee Russo’s character that she shouldn’t date Don Johnson’s character because he’s mean to dogs, small children and old people? I mean, he’s not wrong, is he? Also, maybe don’t date (or vote) for people who are actually mean to almost everyone.

So you may think, why isn’t he really loving on the cat, but Tim Walz is a wise man who knows that cats like to be loved in their own way and in their own time.

I remember right before the 2016 election, standing in my kitchen chopping onion for something I was making for dinner that night. Soup, maybe? It doesn’t matter. What I remember thinking was that there was a simple joy in chopping onions, even though a lot of people think it’s drudgery. A task best out-sourced to servants or high-end chefs.

But I was chopping onions and making a meal for my family and there was so much joy in that and I knew with absolute certainty that this was a joy Donald Trump had never experienced. A joy that he, in fact, would never experience because he could not possibly see chopping onions as joy. How, you know, sad for him.

People are calling Harris/Walz the joy ticket and I am all about it. I think they have both chopped onions and known it for the joy that it is. We need some fucking joy in our lives, big time. I’m also pretty excited at the prospect of putting a teacher in the White House.

It’s a few years ago now I heard the sociologist Nicholas Christakis talking on On Being about how humans are actually wired for good. We are very good at a social suite of predispositions like friendship, love, teaching and learning. It was the first time I really internalized the idea that teaching is an incredibly generous and caring things that we humans do for each other. This is ironic, given that teaching is what I’ve been doing for the past twenty years.

Of course, other species teach things to their young. How to fly or kill that wildebeest or migrate. As humans, we teach our children lots of things to help them survive. But we do so much more than that. We teach them to love the things we love. We teach them how to pet the cat softly so we don’t hurt her. We teach them how to read and write (two other amazing human things that can only be taught—we have no inborn instincts for either). We teach them to look at the clouds and how to make that really yummy salsa.

We teach each other all the time. Here’s how you sign up for that thing online. Here’s how you use a mortar drill. Here’s how you do a garter stich. Here’s how you can tomatoes. Here’s a way to get to Louisville that’s so much nicer than the interstate.

We are natural teachers. We do it all the time, sharing what we’ve figured out about the world with the people around us. We do it spontaneously and mostly without much thought. It’s automatic. We like teaching. It makes us feel good. It’s simple and also one of the most amazing things we can do for each other.

Photo by Mockup Graphics on Unsplash

All of us are teachers in some way or another. Then there are the people for whom teaching is a calling. These people come in all sorts of forms and pop up in all sorts of places. All of us teach, but these people are the Mozart of teaching. The Simone Biles’ of teaching. You know, they’re really good at it.

Why? What makes them good at it? I wish I could give you some very sophisticated and less cheesy answer, but I think it’s pretty simple. What makes a great teacher is love. They love their students. They love the knowledge they get to pass on. They love the moment when a student’s eyes light up with a new realization. They are there for it. They are oozing love. That’s it.

Since Walz was nominated, his former students have been showing up on social media, vouching for him. It seems they clearly love him. They felt loved by him. He loved teaching.

Teaching is at the core of what makes us good and generous as a people. Sometimes I feel like in this particular historical moment, we’ve created a society that is almost perfectly designed to suppress every part of that social suite Christakis was talking about. We live in a world that works very hard to convince us that we are inherently mean and selfish and angry and afraid. It works to convince us that we are naturally bad.

But that’s not true. Teaching still exists. Teachers still exist. It was so good this week to remember that. It was so good this week to see a glimpse of a world in which the best of us is cultivated and celebrated. It feels, you know, joyous.