ALL THINGS MEET AND MINGLE

The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of Heaven mix forever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single,

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, in “Love’s Philosophy”

I came across this quote yesterday, and it immediately struck me that Shelley is sharing sound advice about teaching. The truth that “Nothing in the world is single” is something all teachers should keep in mind, especially in this world where singleness, separation, and struggle are accepted as daily realities, if not everlasting truths. It’s easy for teachers to fall into the convention of seeing themselves as solitary warriors fighting the battle for the hearts and minds of their students, but the facts are very different. As the poet reminds us, “all things […] meet and mingle”, including all teachers, all students, all ideas, and all feelings. We’re never alone in this process of education, because all things “mix forever”. I often use the analogy of a river: the scholars and I are part of a vast and shoreless river composed of all the ideas that have ever been. Like bubbles in a stream, we don’t propel and pilot ourselves, but are irresistibly carried along by the eons of learning that have come before us. We don’t each, by ourselves, have to “make” the current or force it to go in a certain direction, for the great rivers of learning are more spacious than the sky. As teachers and scholars, all we have to do is trust those rivers and stay sharp-eyed and easygoing. In this way, both teaching and learning can be relished “with a sweet emotion”, and no one need ever feel alone.