Yesterday, composer, lyricist, playwright and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda tweeted:
Good morning.
Shout out to the kids trying to read what they love on the bus.
With the homework still undone.
I see you. I am you.— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) October 17, 2017
Like a stone dropped in a lake, Miranda’s thought breaks the glittering (twittering?) surface. His tweets often do. Despite all that is wrong in the world, Miranda reminds us: there is deep human goodness to draw on. There are good people around. You are good, and you send your goodness out.
These kids trying to read what they love on the bus — by simply acknowledging them, Miranda makes us feel how many there are, in every city, state, country. It’s not about us. We’re the adults engaged in the process of delivering this world to them. How do we protect them in their reading? How do we help them do and keep doing what they love? Some of you work with kids in your own therapeutic practices and have direct effect. Some of you work with their parents, teachers, family members. Some of you are parents, teachers, family members — we all have a part.
Miranda, speaking to his younger self, speaks to all. We all hold tension between what we have to do and what we want to do. The tension forms so early. Later, as adults, we come to phrase this tension as “work-life balance.” But, as the philosopher Alain de Botton has pointed out, “There is no work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.” “Work-life balance” is an aspiration — never completely achieved, except by those who would sell it to us for profit. We suffer. We aspire. We find joy and boredom and anger and grief– the whole range of human emotions. We adjust and adjust and adjust, making time and space for what we love — those activities that unbalance our lives — amidst all we have to do.
“I see you. I am you.” We can recognize each other.
All this in one tweet.
Thank you, Mr. Miranda.
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