My Teacher Excels at Spreading Joy
A reunion, fifty-two years in the making, confirms his life’s passion.
Most of the planet acknowledges 2020 has been a woeful year thus far. Finding joy has not been easy. With the calendar settling into the fall season, anxiety—individual and shared—remains acute as calamities mount on multiple fronts: public health, racial justice, the environment, the economy, and politics. Mollifying a day’s edginess with a couple of drinks and a wait-till-tomorrow attitude seems so anachronistic. Today’s angst is like the id monster from Forbidden Planet, raging when we sleep and looming when we’re awake.
Nevertheless, there have been silver linings in 2020. I found joy in the weekday family lunches; in the long-deferred home projects, like that beast of a closet tamed into bags for donation; and in the impromptu kith and kin Zoom reunions, a relief from the work meetings.
Joy, that feeling of great pleasure and happiness, has been a prominent reading topic during the summer lockdown.
A few weeks before the coronavirus gripped the country — the new b.c. — I traveled to my sister’s place in Charlotte. She gave me a copy of The Book of Joy, which I accepted gladly, concealing my skepticism for self-help books, atypical of my reading fare. Contributing to my skepticism, I had come across an article (see footnote below) stating that there are 14,700 titles in the “happiness” category at Amazon — you’d think if we only read more books, we would be a happier country. But, I went with her hunch that I would like the book.
The Book of Joy captures Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s visit to the Dalai Lama’s home-in-exile in Dharamsala, India. The book’s primary author, Douglas Abrams, interviews and narrates a series of conferences between the two spiritual leaders. Their spirit of generosity, love, and wisdom is captured in pictures of the two of them butting foreheads and touching each other’s faces. There is privilege witnessing the two old men banter, discussing how they have found joy despite their troubled lives, the young Dalai Lama leaving home in a disguise to escape persecution by the Chinese government and Archbishop Tutu fighting apartheid in South Africa. The Dalai Lama is a self-proclaimed simple monk. He is the intellectual, offering thoughts that leave the Archbishop gazing at his friend in amazement. The Archbishop is streetwise and pragmatic. He is the dancer (the Dalai Lama’s vows makes dancing off limits) and the comedian, reprimanding the Dalai Lama’s silliness, “Act like a holy man.”
When George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis police became a national tragedy, I was grateful to be mid-book. Reading about generosity, compassion, and acceptance was a remedy for the kind of suffering that can turn inward. Reflecting on the protests that followed, I posted an essay about a play my fifth grade class performed — a reaction to the struggle for civil rights in 1968. The play, written by my teachers, highlighted ideals about justice, equality, and about celebrating our differences, lessons that are just as valid today as they were then.
A number of readers of my essay shared stories of their inspirational teachers and mentors. I heard about Ms. Plumail, Miss Pisapia, Mr. Howell, and others. These stories along with a renewed admiration for teachers, was another silver lining in 2020. Communities remembered the vital role teachers play in children’s lives.
But one reader was special. Mr. Baraz, my fifth-grade teacher, read the essay, which led to scheduling a Zoom meeting. It was surreal. The two of us, the teacher and the student, reconnecting fifty-two years later. There was much joy in our hearts.
James Baraz no longer has a beard and his hair is shorter, but, otherwise, he was as I remembered. His mannerisms revived dormant memories. On the other hand, he last saw me at eleven. Back then, our age difference seemed large. Today, that difference seemed insignificant, yet, I found it difficult to call him James. Over the years, Mr. Baraz was the mentor I placed on a pedestal, a pedestal that grew into a mighty plinth.
During our conversation, he promised to send me his book, Awakening Joy, a companion to the Buddhist meditation courses he teaches — an HR professional couldn’t dream of a better career match. He intimated the book was a more nuanced account of his life, foibles and all. A few days later, the book arrived with a touching inscription.
His book is part self-help, part memoir. His personal stories added substance and depth to that exalted, yet, flat image I had created over the years. He writes about moments of great personal doubt, the important people in his life, and the mistakes he made. That he dropped acid around the time he was my teacher was shocking but not surprising — after all, it was the sixties. I was pleasantly surprised that he was from Queens and that he loved astronomy as a kid like I did. A pivotal point in the book is when he learns he has fathered a son, an African American son. At twenty-two and unable to handle the situation, he angrily turns away his three-month-old son and the mother. He would carry that regret for twenty-nine years before a heartwarming reunion.
He writes about his first day at P.S. 122 in Astoria, walking to his new classroom with the principal, who is worried about his look. Mr. Baraz makes a deal with the principal that if he wins over the school community, he can keep his long hair and beard. Mr. Baraz easily won the deal with the principal, killing everyone with kindness, quickly becoming the school’s favorite teacher.
In that new classroom, twenty-five fifth graders, including me, were waiting for their replacement teacher. Our first teacher had been shipped off to Vietnam during the infamous teachers’ strike of 1968 that lasted into November.
When I came across his personal teaching challenge, I had to read it a few times,
“Could I find the secret to each child’s heart so they could all come out from their hiding places inside? If I could do that, they would have a good chance at taking that leap — a huge jump over a giant abyss for some. When you know your teacher loves you and believes in you, especially when you’re eleven or twelve years old, you start to maybe love and believe in yourself.”
This statement validated the stories I told, for decades, about my fifth grade teacher. I was a beneficiary of his teaching challenge. When Mr. Baraz walked into our classroom, I had been in America less than two years. His extra attention, in class and after school, gave me confidence to come out of my hiding place. Having him as a friend and supporter made all the difference in the school yard.
Mr. Baraz was my teacher at an age when children sense the complexity of the world. They discover that the world has a past and a future. Before, it only had a present. This new gate leads to an appetite for knowledge, an inquisitiveness that can be met by indifference and rigidity or by attention and openness. It is at this key moment that the teacher gardener nourishes a sapling that can’t fathom the height of its branches, inspiring it to seek the sun. The teacher gardener understands that children grow when they feel special. This is what made Mr. Baraz unique in my schooling, and what makes so many fabulous teachers memorable for a lifetime.
Today, through his book, he is a sage guide to ancient wisdom, perfect lessons for his grown-up student seeking to be more generous and mindful. With the prognosis for the rest of 2020 no different than the prior months, his “ten steps to happiness” are antidotes for uncertainty: the coronavirus winter surge, the dreadful political situation in the U.S., and the ongoing racial divisions, stoked by numerous bad actors. With a high potential for mayhem, his lesson on equanimity will be practical. With his dog-eared book in hand, it occurs to me the Baraz pedestal has morphed into a joyous pair of bookends.
Readings Referenced:
Baraz, James and Shoshana. Alexander. 2010. Awakening Joy: 10 Steps That Will Put You On the Road to Real Happiness. New York: Bantam Books.
Beard, Alison (2015). The Happiness Backlash, Harvard Business Review, July-August 2015. https://hbr.org/2015/07/the-happiness-backlash
Dalai Lama [Tenzin Gyatso] and Desmond Tutu. 2016. The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World. With Douglas Abrams. New York: Avery.
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