12th November 2010

Something happened in English today and I can't stop thinking about it, which is annoying because I have an Economics problem set due tomorrow and my brain has decided that critical analysis of fiscal policy can wait while it replays a forty-minute conversation on a loop. Brains are terrible at priorities, mine especially.

Mr Calloway kept me after class. Not in trouble, just, he wanted to talk about my essay on Othello. I wrote about how Iago isn't evil in the cartoon villain way, he's evil because he understands people so well and uses it against them. Which is emotional intelligence, without a moral guide. I really liked that line when I came up with it. I wasn't sure if it was good or if I was just trying to sound smart which I sometimes do. Mae calls it my "show-off spiral."

Mr Calloway read one of my paragraphs back to me and then did something that no teacher has done before - he asked me what I thought? Not what Shakespeare meant, not what the mark scheme wanted, and not what the "right" answer was. He wanted to know what I actually thought, as a person with a brain and an opinion!

I did not know what to do with the question at first because I felt like being handed a microphone when you are used to being in the audience. The question made me feel that way. My first instinct was to say what I thought the person who asked the question wanted to hear. This is a reflex I am starting to notice about myself. I am starting to notice this reflex about the question. I am not sure I like it. The question and my reaction, to the question are making me think about this reflex. But he waited, properly waited, not the impatient waiting that's really just a polite countdown to giving you the answer themselves, the kind of waiting that has actual space in it. So, I said that what really scares me in the play isn't Iago’s actions, but that Othello believes him. This is because people usually go for the story that confirms their fears, about themselves. Mr. Calloway looked at me properly the way grown-ups do when they suddenly see you're not a kid anymore. He said, "Alex, what you just said is not something a seventeen-year-old would say. That's a deep insight.". There's a difference."

I walked home the long way because I needed to think about that as an observation is seeing something and an insight is understanding why it's there. I have been seeing things my life. I run my eyes over classrooms and family dinners and friendship groups. I notice who is comfortable and who is pretending to be. I see who is leading. Who is letting them lead. I see who is laughing because something is funny and who is laughing because silence felt scary.. I thought everyone did that. I thought that noticing was just what happens when you are paying attention to the people around you like the people in your family and your friends. I thought everyone was paying attention to the people in their life like I was paying attention to my family and my friends. Noticing people is something I do like when I am at school or with my friends I am always noticing the people, around me like my family and my friends.

Maybe it's not. Maybe most people are paying attention to something else entirely, to themselves, or to what's expected, or to the noise. Maybe what I do, this constant reading of rooms and people and the spaces between what someone says and what they mean, is different, and I just haven't found the name for it yet.

Mae says I overthink a lot - she told me this the other day while eating a KitKat without breaking the bars apart first, which tells me everything I need to know about her relationship with overthinking. For her things arrive at her brain, she processes them and moves on, like a conveyor belt made of common sense. I love her dearly, but she is a chaos agent wrapped in a sensible coat. Just realise that she might read this one day and throw another grape at me!

Mum was on the phone when I got home, talking to Auntie Rose about a neighbour's kitchen renovation that apparently "went badly wrong" in a way that required forty minutes of detailed analysis. I sat at the table and ate an apple and listened without meaning to. Mum noticed me after a while and mouthed, "You alright?" I nodded and she went back to the kitchen disaster. She looked at me again before she hung up the same way Mr Calloway did. It was like she was seeing something she had not expected to see on a Tuesday afternoon. It was as if I had grown slightly while she was not looking. She was trying to catch up without making a fuss, about the kitchen disaster and me. 

I have decided something. I want to be the kind of person who asks people what they think about things, not what they know about the kitchen disaster or anything else.. Knowing is just memory. Thinking is alive. Mr Calloway gave me that today, and I don't think he even realises it. One conversation, one question asked with actual curiosity, and something shifted. If that's what teaching is, it might be the most important job in the world. Also, I still haven't done the Economics problem set but Fiscal policy can have me tomorrow. Tonight belongs to Iago and insights and the difference between seeing and understanding.