Life's Teachers

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This week I experienced an unexpected slice of heaven.

I found myself sitting on a teeny tiny chair under the blazing sun at a pre-K graduation. My granddaughter Lyla’s graduation, to be exact. And what happened in that yard impacted me in a way that I am still feeling days later.

I listened as young children sang loudly and joyfully about friendship. Their “Forever Friends” song told the audience to make new friends but not to forget to keep the old. They told us they had a lot of love surrounding them. They turned to one another and sang: “I celebrate you and you and you.” They sang that in every heart is an ocean and that their hopes and dreams will grow. They reminded the adults sitting on the tiny chairs:

We, the children, are light.

We shine like stars in the night.

And then they sang about being bucket fillers, not bucket dippers. And finally, at the very top of their lungs, they said:

Don’t blink.

Or you’ll miss the moment.

Don’t let it slip away.

I barely noticed as the tears streamed down my face.

These children were full of hope, full of joy, full of friendship. They reminded the adults sitting in that yard what really matters in life. They said what I have been trying to say in this column for weeks. And they said it better.

Thirty years ago, I sat in a similar chair watching my granddaughter’s mother—my daughter Katherine—do the same drill. In a blink, I was back in time. And then I was here again. Back and forth my mind went as my heart swelled with more emotion than I had room for.

And then I remembered: this graduation fell on Katherine’s seventh wedding anniversary. Three generations, circling the same moment. A mother. A daughter. A granddaughter. All of us, in our own time, learning the same things about friendship and love and showing up for one another. That is not a coincidence. That is life doing what life does when you are paying attention.

Lyla’s teacher, Oscar Casillas (who also happened to be the father of one of the graduating students), gave a short speech that I want to share with you today.

We hear a great deal about commencement speeches at colleges and universities. But Oscar’s words to a group of five-year-olds moved me as deeply as any speech I have ever heard.

There he was: a pre-K teacher on a folding chair in a schoolyard, teaching every adult in the room something they had forgotten they needed to know. His words made me think about teachers. Not just the ones in classrooms, though God bless every single one of them, because they show up every day for other people’s children and pour themselves into work that the world wildly undervalues. I mean teachers in the broadest sense.

Here is what I’ve come to believe: everyone who enters our lives is a teacher. The ones who stay and love us well are teachers. The ones who challenge us, frustrate us, and push us to our limits are also teachers. The ones who leave, disappoint us, or are only with us for a season…they’re teachers as well. Maybe especially them.

Let me ask you: Who have been your greatest teachers, and do they know you feel that way about them? Are there people you never thought of as teachers at all, but who, in hindsight, taught you some of your most important lessons? Lessons that may have been painful at the time but shaped who you became?

And what about you? What lessons are you teaching every day through your actions, your kindness, your mistakes, and your resilience? Do you believe you have wisdom worth sharing? Experiences that could make life a little easier, a little richer, or a little less lonely for someone else? What do you know now that you wish someone had told you twenty years ago?

Teaching, in the broadest sense, is one of the ways we forge connections. And connection is what heals longing. Connection is what softens loneliness. Connection is how we remind one another that none of us is walking through this life alone. Connection is how friendship begins.

Every Sunday in this publication, teachers show up. They teach us about grief and joy, about leadership and loss, about overcoming and about ourselves. Some of them have been with us for years. Some appear once and leave something behind that we carry forever. People like Vic Blends, who tells us this week what men are saying in his barber chair. Millions of people listen to him, and we get to listen to him today. People like Jennifer Levi, who has written for us before about grief and about losing her son. Today, she talks about the grief that she and her husband share—and don’t share—and what it’s like to grieve differently from someone under the same roof. People like First Lady of Minnesota Gwen Walz (a teacher herself), who has a voice for compassion, unity, and understanding. This Sunday, she speaks to us about what her city of Minneapolis has gone through and why the Special Olympics will be a healing experience for all of us who get to attend.

If we could learn to see everyone who crosses our path that way—as someone who has something to show us, something to teach us, even if we can’t yet see what it is—I think we would move through the world very differently. With more patience. More curiosity. More grace.

Oscar reminded me of that. He spoke about accountability. About regulating yourself. About using your words. About understanding that we are all in this big life experiment together. He spoke about the choice each of us makes every single day: Do we want to fill the buckets of others or drain them?

It can sometimes feel as though we’re surrounded by people determined to drain our buckets. So many of our political leaders get up every morning and tell us what is wrong with our lives, what is wrong with our country, and what is wrong with the future that awaits us. They pour fear into our buckets and call it leadership.

Oscar did the exact opposite. He reminded those children—and every adult in that yard—of their potential. Of their responsibilities. Of their neighbors. Of the radical and simple truth that we are all in this together. That is what real leaders do. That is what real friends do. They lift us up. They help carry us forward. They fill our buckets with everything that is good and then show us the road from here to there.

After the pre-K ceremony ended, my granddaughter Lyla walked over, took my hand, and invited me to sit down with her and eat pizza. I gave her flowers, told her how proud I was of her, and that she was magnificent. She filled my bucket until it overflowed.

I carried that feeling with me through the rest of my week. I kept thinking about it—the warmth of it, the simplicity of it, the way one small person’s love can change the temperature of an entire day.

And then I started thinking about the others who fill my bucket. Who they are, how often I tell them, and whether I show up for them the way they show up for me.

And then I started thinking about you. I thought about how I could fill your bucket and about how you could fill mine. I thought about all the teachers in my life who guided me, challenged me, and loved me. Even the people who broke my heart. Every one of them left me with something.

Maybe that’s the invitation hidden inside Oscar’s speech. To become a bucket filler. To become a teacher. Not necessarily in a classroom. Not with a lesson plan. But in the way we show up for one another.

Because none of us need to wait for a political leader to lead us forward. We can do that for one another. We can do it in a schoolyard, at a dinner table, on a phone call that is long overdue, or in a note that says simply:

I see you.

I celebrate you.

You matter to me.

This is the Summer of Friendship. Not a program. Not a campaign. A choice. Made one bucket at a time. Don’t blink. Or you’ll miss the moment.

Also in this week’s issue:

• Jennifer Levi Tells Us How One Family Grieves Differently Under One Roof

• What the Young Men in My Chair Are Saying

• A Brighter Future is Taking the Field In Minnesota