How can I understand who I am? What do I desire to be? What do I want my life story to be? Is my route taking me to my desired destination?
Levoy (1997) writes about engaging in a"pow-wow° with your own soul (p. 133). What better way to dialogue with yourself! This form of self-exploration needs to be an ongoing conversation with yourself during which your intelligence, intuition, fears, joys, and challenges are called into question, explored, and understood maybe just a bit better. As Palmer (1998) suggests, self-awareness forces you to face your fears: fears of diversity-that there may not be one right answer, one viewpoint, one way, one experience; fears of conflict-that you may not have lots of "friends" around you, that your beliefs may unsettle or even anger others, that your values be may in direct opposition to those of the norm; fears of a possible loss of identity-that you might be risking losing your sense of self when confronted with conflicting ideas; and fears of having to change your life-that transformation, new values, and new ways of living may be called for.
Though sometimes fearful, self-awareness can, nonetheless, take you closer to knowing, understanding, living, and loving. As it supports you on your journey toward democratic living, it releases you from the need for control, for having all the answers, for perfection, and for criticism of difference. It helps you to embrace the "otherness of the world and to see more clearly which actions are life giving [for democratic living] and which are not," and, most important, "to participate more fully in your own destinies and the destiny of the world" (Palmer, 1998, p. 56).
Because you have been "called" to the noble profession of teaching, you have a responsibility to your students to nurture what Armstrong (1998) refers to as the "genius" within yourself. For without those poetic qualities of teaching-joy, sensitivity, curiosity, playfulness, imagination, creativity, wonder, wisdom, inventiveness, vitality, and flexibility-teaching is as he suggests "like soda pop without the fizzle" (p. 15). By traveling this road of self-exploration, you will awaken the poetry within you. You will begin to construct your identity and your life story around your noblest aspirations. As noted earlier, if you choose this journey, it will not he an easy road to follow. You will be personally challenged to heed the advice of the poet,