letters to my class

Dear Humans,

We made posters of Earth’s atmosphere yesterday. And you were very careful to separate it up into its five layers–troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. Because that’s what the assignment told you to do.

And you drew the lines between the atmospheric layers in thick, black marker. Because that’s what we humans like to do. We like to draw big, bold lines between things. The lines between states or countries. The lines between eras of history.

But most of these lines are actually pretty squiggly and squishy. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real: they’re based on real factors such as temperature and air density. It just means that the lines are drawn by human hands and human minds. The atmosphere didn’t decide to put itself into five layers. We studied the atmosphere and decided that was a good way to make sense of a really complex thing.

Because that’s what humans do.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

Right now, I’m waiting for some book order books. Right now, a lot of people are waiting for a lot of things. Over the past few decades, we’ve created a pretty impressive method for creating and shipping things all around the globe. It was sophisticated, efficient and cheap. And it worked pretty well.

But then something weird happened. And some things changed. And a lot of times when humans make things that work really, really efficiently and cheaply, those things aren’t very flexible. And they can get easily disrupted. That’s why I’m waiting for our books.

Luckily for us, individual human beings don’t have to be that way. Though we sometimes probably wish we were more sophisticated and efficient, it’s better to be the resilient and adaptable beings that we are. Because weird things happen. And things change.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

It’s interesting to watch the trees turn colors and drop their leaves. And though the trees together look beautiful with their autumn hues, when you look at them individually, you see that there’s a lot of variation. Some trees still have most of their leaves; some of them are nearly bare.

All of the deciduous trees will eventually drop their leaves, because they have to to survive the winter and come back in the spring. But when exactly they do it depends on a lot of factors: tree species, location, weather, wind.

Humans are kind of the same way. We’re all going through processes of change that keep us alive. But there are a lot of variables in how and when. And each individual is different. So we have to learn to be patient. Just like the trees.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Meteorologists,

We like to look down our noses at the past. We think we’re so much smarter than people used to be back then. Back when they’d put leeches on their owies and base their weather predictions on folk sayings about the color of the sky. We with our satellites and radar and high tech weather instruments.

But the heart of science has always been looking and observing, not the fancy gadgets we do it with. Sure, our forecasts are much better now, but it’s not because we’ve done something different. It’s because we’ve gotten better and more organized at that same old human impulse: to see the world, to know the world, and to share our knowledge of it.

And future generations will get even better at it. And they’ll look down their noses at us, fools that we are.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

Every once in a while I have to clean the gunk off the pump dispenser of the hand sanitizer bottle. If you don’t, it will spray in unpredictable directions and just might get you in the eye.

But while I’m cleaning off the dried over hand sanitizer, I know that the crud will return in just a few days. It’s the same way I feel as I’m mowing my lawn–it’s just going to grow back. And when I’m organizing my sock drawer–this too will soon give way to disarray.

Much of life is a losing battle. We can’t keep up with the forces against us. But when I’m starting to feel down about this fact, I look at that freshly cleaned pump dispenser, and my heart rejoices. I think about how good it feels–at least for a short while–to look out over my fresh-cut grass. 

And that’s enough.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

I was in a corn maze on Saturday and I decided it’s just like life. 

People give you unsolicited advice. But they’re stuck in the corn maze too, so what good is it? Places start to look familiar and you’re convinced you’ve been here before. But you can’t be sure. If you had a bird’s eye view, it would all make sense. But we’re stuck here on the ground level. We can only see as far as the dead end ahead of us. 

So you concoct a strategy. Maybe you always take a left, or you try to make sense of the direction of the footprints on the dirt path. Or maybe you just decide to follow the group ahead of you.

And, finally, you end up right back where you started, though you’re not sure how you did it. But you learn to be grateful for the time spent walking around in the warm autumn sun.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

You might find yourself worrying about the dangers in this world. Especially if you’re one of those people who likes to watch scary movies when Halloween approaches. You might check behind every door, expecting a bad guy to jump out. You might look in every sewer grate, expecting to see a red balloon.

But the times when I’ve been hurt the worst, I’ve done it to myself. Banging my head on my car door when I was simply reaching in to grab my bag. Slicing open my finger when I was trying to wash a Santoku knife. Slipping on the ice because I was in a hurry to get into my nice warm car.

We are our own biggest threats. That doesn’t mean that danger doesn’t exist in the world. It does. But we can do lots to avoid it. We can’t, however, always avoid the danger we pose to ourselves.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

I’m a little mad that “life” is a noun. It really ought to be a verb. Life is not something you have; life is something you do–everyday, succeeding and failing, learning and forgetting, finding and losing.

We like to pretend that our lives are contained. We like to think there’s a true us that we’re in the process of finding or uncovering.

But the true us is what we cobble together through years of living. We go through phases and think for a while that we found the true us. But then we keep on living and look back on those old selves with embarrassment. And maybe we learn something along the way–maybe we find a brand of laundry detergent that we really like–but we never figure out enough to stop searching, to stop lifing.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

We’ve been investigating commas lately and it’s made them my favorite punctuation mark. But they’ve long haunted me because I’ve never been quite sure if I’m using them correctly. All my life I’ve searched for the one rule to rule commas.

But it turns out there’s not just one rule when it comes to commas (or many other things in life). There are lots of ways to use commas correctly. And that, like most tools, is what makes them so useful. 

But just because there are lots of correct answers doesn’t mean that all answers are correct. There are many, many ways to use commas incorrectly. But there are also many ways to use them correctly. And the best way we can figure it out is by reading, studying, and writing, not just memorizing rules.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

The other day I was cleaning up the kitchen and saw my daughter’s watercolor paints that she’d left out, the lid flipped open and those eight perfect circles of contrasting colors just waiting for a brush to dab them up and swirl them onto a blank sheet of paper. 

And I thought about all the potential that rests inside of those simple paints. The pigs, ponies, and portraits of people that she’ll create from those cheap, simple paints.

Find your own set of watercolors, whatever it may be. Maybe it’s paint or clay. Or maybe it’s words or numbers. Or maybe it’s your own body on the dance stage or athletic field. Whatever has the potential for you to create new things and ideas to put out in the world. Because the world is starved for new ideas. And the potential to create them lies in the simple things all around us.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt