Ken Szymanski
For the latest in a long line of quarantine “distance learning” assignments, my 8th grade students listened to an episode of This American Life. In the story, a nine-year-old girl bombards her father with the biggest questions in the universe. Where do we go when we die? Is heaven another planet? How do you know what is true? And so on.
After listening to the story, students logged into an online quiz. It started with fact-recall and then became more abstract. The final question—Quiz Question 7—echoed the one that the dad in the story had the hardest time answering: What is love?
This question was my student teacher’s suggestion. I was skeptical. If I had been asked “What is love?” in 8th grade, I would have responded, “How am I supposed to know?” Plus, the novelty of distance learning had worn thin. Jaded students were no longer giving their all with these ungraded “supplemental” assignments; I didn’t imagine they were eager to dig into such a complex question. Sometimes it felt like these assignments were simply an item to cross off a list, something in the way of them getting on with their days.
Trying to create something more personal, I’ve been recording and sending the students a series of fake radio call-in shows based on the assignments. I actually added a laugh track after my jokes, to make it sound less lonely.
When I opened the quiz responses and got to Quiz Question 7, the first student had written a quick “i don’t know.” Others, though, dove in deep. Some answers were so profound that I put them in a Google search to see if they had gotten that answer online. (A couple did.) But some of these 8th graders, perhaps because of the story or the extended isolation, had turned into sages and philosophers.
Unlike the dad in the story who struggled to answer the “What is love?” question, 8th graders wrote of putting someone before yourself, seeing beyond the façade, and a sense of belonging that “keeps you sane.”
One student wrote, “Love is not giving up. It’s more than just a word; it’s a feeling, it’s something you show. Love is something that lingers on your brain even when you don’t know it’s there.”
Another student offered one idea from each side of his brain: “Love could be something purely chemical, its purpose is keeping our species alive. Or it’s something of magic. Magic powerful enough to bind people together. You choose which one you believe in.”
I can’t imagine formulating those thoughts when I was in 8th grade. I’d have been more like this student who took a comical approach, simply writing, “Kevin Love is a player for the Cleveland Cavaliers.”
While some took it lightly, others explored potential perils. One extended answer ended with, “Love can make you feel whole but it also can break you down until you are nothing. Loving is a dangerous game and you don’t know if you can come out on top.”
Another only saw the dangers, simply stating that love is pain.
That’s undeniable. Still, some chose to see beyond pain and even, in the case of one student, beyond our physical existence. She listened to the story with her mom and admitted that they both cried. Yet this teenager took solace in the idea that “energy is neither created nor destroyed. And so that’s why when someone dies, we can still feel their energy even though they’re not there.”
That’s love, “something that lingers on your brain even when you don’t know it’s there.” And the unwavering belief in it, voiced from quarantined middle schoolers—the next generation—is something more.
It is hope.
Ken Szymanski is the 2020-2022 Eau Claire Writer in Residence. For more on Ken’s writing, click here.