ENDURING RICHES

Strange, but sometimes I feel, as I’m standing or sitting among my students, that I am a millionaire many times over. My actual bank account wouldn’t break any records, but the wealth that’s with me when I’m teaching sometimes seems over-the-top, totally beyond counting, inconceivably vast. It’s a wealth that no trials or tribulations can take away and no economic downturn can damage. It’s mine to make use of as I wish, now and for evermore. I’m speaking here, as you can tell, of interior riches -- of thoughts, insights, enlightenments, stray feelings flowing past during class, any of the countless wonders of the mind and heart that happen to any teacher every day. If I could somehow count it all, add it up like currency, the final total would take up whole pages. I could break a bank with all the wealth I win each day in class. Even now, as I sit at my desk in my classroom in the cooling hours of the late afternoon, I find myself smiling as I consider the countless new feelings and thoughts that flew softly into me today from somewhere or everywhere as I was teaching. I don’t have piles of money packed in vaults in the bank, but I do have ideas that don’t stop pouring in like cold cash as I carry out my blessed duties as a teacher.