There is No Me
by Steve McGill

The past few days, as the new school year draws closer, a scene I keep seeing in my mind. It’s not a dream, or a vision, but like a scene from a hypothetical TV show. In the scene, I’m teaching a group of students. I’m frustrated with them, but not angry at them. I feel like these kids have so much potential, but they’re holding themselves back from realizing it. I say to them, “You’re a work of art. All of you are works of art. So if you’re gonna be a work of art, be a masterpiece. Be God’s masterpiece.” Then I pause before I add, “and stop f***ing around.” I say it with love. Again, I’m not angry. It just pains me to see people with potential fall short of their potential.

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As I look around the room and gaze into the faces of the students, I see that all of them are me.

* * *

One day toward the end of my sophomore year of college, I played pickup basketball in the gym for four hours straight. It was the day after the conference championship track meet, where I had made the finals in the 110 meter high hurdles, but then finished last in the finals. Eighth out of eight. Making it to the final had required me to run the best race of my life just to claim fourth place in my semifinal heat; I ran poorly in the final because I couldn’t find the strength to pull off another personal best later in the same meet.

I was sick of track. I was sick of hurdling, even though I loved it. Finishing last in a big race that I had trained all year for crushed my spirit, making me doubt the value of all the hard work I had put in during the off-season, the indoor season, during holiday breaks, and during the outdoor season. I longed desperately to be a great hurdler, but the truth was, I was far from great. 

The next day, a Sunday, feeling sad and depressed, I lay in bed in my room all morning and afternoon, giving my mind and body some time to recover. Around 6 pm I grew tired of feeling sorry for myself, so I decided to get dressed in some basketball gear and head over to the gym. I hadn’t played in any pickup games for several months, as I had devoted all of my athletic time and energy to completing sprint workouts, hurdle workouts, lifting workouts — with my teammates and on my own. But now that  my track season had officially ended and I had nothing left to train for, I could go hooping guilt-free.

* * *

I grew up in a basketball family. My oldest brother Greg played in high school and college. My other brother Glen played in high school and community college. My sister played in high school. My dad coached me and Glen in our 7th and 8th grade years (and my mom served as scorekeeper at home games). I played through my sophomore year of high school, before I made the decision my junior year to run track during the indoor season as well as during the outdoor season. By then, I had grown to despise the sight of a basketball. While I never stopped loving playing pickup games in the gym or at a local park, the formal structure of organized basketball — with coaches screaming, refs blowing whistles, the need to run set plays, the agony of spending long portions of games on the bench — I felt like I was trapped in a cage. In track there was no bench to sit on, no coach calling out plays, no refs calling fouls. Running track and taking on the hurdles as my specialty event for my last two years of high school, I felt like I was chilling out in the Garden of Eden with no snakes.

But in college I had put a lot of pressure on myself to excel. My senior year of high school, I had miraculously survived a battle with a rare blood disease, aplastic anemia, that put me in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for three weeks. After being released from CHOP a day or two before Thanksgiving, I returned to school, rejoined the track team in January, and won a league title in the 110 hurdles in May. Upon entering college, I planned to pick up where I had left off, and to build on it. Sure, the hurdles would be three inches higher, but I would be a year stronger and faster.

After the conference meet final my sophomore year, I recognized that I had become my own worst enemy. Instead of acknowledging that I’d had a great season and had beaten the odds by making the finals, I focused only on that last miserable race that, in my mind, had ruined it all. I had put so much pressure on myself the past two years to stay competitive against so many outstanding athletes who had all been stars in high school, I had turned track into the sport I needed a break from. I had turned my paradise into a prison. That’s why I headed to the gym the day after the conference meet — to wash myself clean of the self-loathing and self-pity that I had allowed to take over as my go-to mindset.

* * *

I don’t know how many games I played that night. There weren’t a lot of guys in the gym — maybe 12 or 13 — so even if my team lost, I could get picked up by whoever had winners. And I was in great shape from running track, so fatigue never entered into the equation for me. If I recall correctly, my team did win most of its games. After every game I was like, “Run it back?” And there’d always be enough guys sticking around for another game. There was a moment during one of the games when a thought hit me: If I were to stay in this gym and keep playing game after game for the rest of my life, would I miss anything else?

The answer was a resounding no. I wouldn’t miss my classes, or deciding on a career path, or the stress that came with being an average DIII hurdler whose hurdle dreams were fading away. I wouldn’t miss hanging out with friends, or going to parties, or awkward conversations with girls, or any other aspect of my life. At the time, I couldn’t have articulated why or how these pickup games lifted my soul into another dimension; now, I absolutely can.

I was feeling the bliss of being nobody. On the court, playing 5-on-5 with and against dudes I’d never hung out with before and many of whom I had never even seen on campus before, I was just another guy running up and down from endline to endline. I was just another guy trying to score a bucket, make a pass, steal the ball, fill the lane on a fastbreak. The anonymity, coupled with the easy movements of my body, and the freedom from expectations, goals, desires — either self-imposed or otherwise — felt so liberating, so exhilarating. 

I didn’t want to leave that gym.

* * *

Moments like that, when I have felt free from self-consciousness have almost always occurred when engaged in physical activity — hurdle workouts in my younger days, long runs throughout my 40s, long walks throughout my 50s. When I’m out on a walk, I’m nobody. I’m nobody’s teacher, nobody’s coach, nobody’s colleague. Not only am I free from all those identities, but I’m also free from the constant chatter of my own mind. Last week I woke up to go for a walk, but remembered that rent on my townhome was due. I had stopped making automatic payments a while ago because one time, when my old lease had expired and the new one had started, I forgot to renew the automatic payments (and no one at the rental office reminded me that I needed to), so I ended up paying a late fee that month. Since then, I’ve just told myself to remember to pay the rent the first of the month every month. So, it was the first of the month, and I didn’t want paying the rent on my mind while on my walk, so I pulled out my laptop and went to pay online. To my utter annoyance, the website wouldn’t load. After messing around with it for a few minutes, I said the heck with it and headed out to the park for my walk. I walked for about 90 minutes, and entered a calm, flow state for the majority of the walk, after I had moved past the initial aches and soreness of the first five minutes or so. Not until I drove back home, walked upstairs and saw my laptop did I remember that I needed to pay the rent. The whole time at the park, thoughts of rent had disappeared from my mind. 

Sometimes when I write, that feeling of freedom from self-consciousness enters into me as well. When I step into the writing zone, 30 minutes goes by so fast that it feels like five. An hour goes by so fast that it feels like 10 minutes. The only reason I’ve ever been late (besides traffic) for private coaching sessions has been because I’ve been in the middle of writing an article or an essay and didn’t realize how much time had passed. 

* * *

I love teaching English. I love books, I love intellectually stimulating discussions, I love helping young people become better writers and better thinkers. I love the students I teach, even the pains in the ass and the lazy bums. That’s why the part of me that is extroverted comes out when I teach. It’s not an act; it’s not just a role I play. It’s who I am, in my heart and in my bones. When I yell, “Let’s goooo!!!!” after a student answers a really difficult question, or provides a very thought-provoking insight, that’s real. It amps me up. One time, in one of my “traditional” classes (meaning it wasn’t honors or AP) we were discussing a novel we were reading when I was about to explain something to the students, but decided at the last second to pose it as a question instead. “Let’s see if  you can figure out where I’m going with this,” I said, then asked the question. They sat there with blank expressions, until one girl raised her hand. I called on her, and her answer was directly in line with where I was hoping the question would take them. Feeling vindicated for not spoonfeeding them the answer like I had initially planned to, and feeling super-proud of this student, I walked over to where she was sitting, told her to stand up, and gave her a big hug. “That’s what I’m talking about!” I yelled, like I was in the bleachers at a football game. The rest of the students clapped for the girl, and I could see her eyes welling up with tears. Months later, right before the school year ended, the girl wrote me a thank-you letter in which she explained that she had never been one to speak up in class until she came to my class, because I made her feel confident in her own voice. Believe me when I tell you I felt like doing somersaults and cartwheels and backflips when I read that letter.

* * *

The scene that kept playing in my mind the last few weeks — the one I talked about in the beginning of this essay, where all the students were me — it wasn’t telling me that I need to fix myself or change myself or heal myself in some manner. It was saying that every student I teach is me, everyone I form a friendship with is me, everyone I encounter is me, everyone on God’s green earth is me. We’re all works of art. So why be self-conscious? Why limit ourselves? “Be masterpieces” doesn’t mean be “great” in a quantifiable sense — winning a championship, becoming a valedictorian, reaching billionaire status. It means be You, the pure, essential, uninhibited You. 

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