Taking the longview in an instant-feedback world

Every blogger knows the experience of posting what you think is the best blogpost you have ever written, only to get exactly zero comments.

And every parent knows the experience of sharing something you adore with your kids and thinking it’ll transform their lives, only to be met with an utter lack of visible enthusiasm.

And every English teacher knows the experience of teaching that poem that you love with every cell of your being, only to look out at a sea of students who appear to be counting the seconds until lunchtime.

As a blogger, mom, and teacher, I’ve had all three experiences.  And while they are a bummer in the moment, I’ve learned that I have to take the longview.  Ideas are like seeds: they have to germinate, and they’re slow to sprout sometimes.  And sometimes what we put out there into the world touches people deeply without our knowing it.  There’s a form of trust that goes into all of these activities, I believe — trust that what we share will find a home, will reach the people who need it, even if we never ever hear about it.

Just the other day the boys and I were going through the huge overstuffed bookshelf in their room, weeding through the board books they no longer read and figuring out which to give away and which to keep (they have their mom’s inability to get rid of books, alas).  In the process of doing so, we came across a few treasures we haven’t seen for a while, including this book.  It was mine when I was a child (that dirt in the right-hand corner is about three decades old).

I read through the book again, for the first time in a long time, and came across this poem from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  It’s a gem, and  a potent reminder that we all need to keep on singing and taking the longview.

The Arrow and the Song

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Amen to that.