Gutters and Strikes

As I do most nights after my bride and children fall asleep, I channel surf to find some mind numbing nonsense to help me get ready for bed. Last night, I came upon one of my favorite movies, The Big Lebowski. It is a good thing that my family wasn't awake because they would have had to suffer through me reciting the entire movie line by line and would be left asking a typical question: "How do you know the lines to this movie?"

It was through this late night binge of a cult classic that I began reflecting on my job as a professional educator and one line from the movie stood out to me. Near the end of the movie Sam Elliot, who plays the stranger and also narrates the movie asks the Dude (Jeff Bridges) how things have been going and he states, "Gutters and strikes. Ups and downs." This line follows a whole movie plot that revolves around the Dude getting the short end of the stick and also witnessing one of his friends die of a heart attack and yet, he still ends up looking at his life through an optimistic lens. It was at this point that I found myself reflecting on a year of a hashtag I have been using called #OwnYourEpic and things began to click. Rather than unwinding and preparing for a deep and blissful slumber, notions of a blog post started dancing in my head.

The Dude, who for all intents and purposes, is a lazy and misguided individual and is the antithesis of the educators I know, does possess a trait that everyone should embody. He is the type of individual who writes his own epic story and understands that his life is going to have highs and lows, but it won't get in the way of the journey he is on. He is the hero of his own story and he embraces the concept of #OwnYourEpic in a way that works for him. He is not a character that we should aspire to become, but rather, he embodies the concept that we should understand that we all have our own story to tell and it is worth telling.

As we prepare to start the second semester of the school year, I challenge all educators to help students discover their epic story and give them the tools necessary to be an outstanding author who embraces different characters who will develop them more completely as an epic hero. We need to help students find their voice and empower them to tell their story because it is important. Ultimately, we need to teach them all that their story has value in spite of the gutter balls in life that they may encounter. As the Dude states, “This is a very complicated case Maude. You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, lotta what-have-yous.” Such is life on the #RoadToAwesome.

But hey, what do I know. This is just like, my opinion, man.