At the beginning of my 8:00 a.m. class one Monday at
University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), I cheerfully asked my students how
their weekend had been. One young man said that his weekend had not been very
good. He’d had his wisdom teeth extracted.
The young man then proceeded to ask me why I always
seemed to be so cheerful. His question reminded me of something I'd read
somewhere before: “Every morning when you get up, you have a choice about how
you want to approach life that day” I said to the young man. “I choose to be
cheerful". “Let me give you an example,” I continued.
The other sixty students in the class ceased their
chatter and began to listen to our conversation. “In addition to teaching here,
I also teach out at the community college in Henderson, about seventeen miles
down the freeway from where I live.
One day a few weeks ago I drove those seventeen miles
to Henderson. I exited the freeway and turned onto College Drive. I only had to
drive another quarter-mile down the road to the college. But just then my car
died. I tried to start it again, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. So I put my
flashers on, grabbed my books and marched down the road to the college.
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| The cheerful day |
“As soon as I got there, I called AAA and asked them to
send a tow truck. The secretary in the Provost's office asked me what had
happened. ‘This is my lucky day,’ I replied, smiling. “‘Your car breaks down
and today is your lucky day?’ She was puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
“I live seventeen miles from here I replied. ‘My car
could have broken down anywhere along the freeway. It didn't. Instead, it broke
down in the perfect place off the freeway, within walking distance of here. I'm
still able to teach my class and I've been able to arrange for the tow truck to
meet me after class.
If my car was meant to break down today, it couldn't
have been arranged in a more convenient fashion. “The secretary's eyes opened
wide and then she smiled. I smiled back and headed for class”. So I ended my
story to the students in my economics class.
I scanned the sixty faces in the lecture hall. Despite
the early hour, no one seemed to be asleep. Somehow, my story had touched them or
maybe it wasn't the story at all. In fact, it had all started with a student's
observation that I was cheerful. A wise man once said, “Who you are speaks
louder to me than anything you can say.” I suppose it must be so.
Author: Lee Ryan Miller - story from his book
"Teaching Amidst the Neon Palm Trees".