It happens each Spring...

I can remember the day Spring arrived in 1973. It was my first real recognition that there in fact was a day it happened. I was a freshman in college walking to an early morning class. The campus was empty. The sun was present. And, about half way up the hill to the soccer field I noticed Spring had arrived. The brown trees had little green buds and the grass was a beautiful emerald carpet.  This was the first time in my life that I had noticed there was indeed a day Spring arrived and if you could just be present to it, you could see it and mark it on a calendar, if you wanted. I write about that moment now because Spring just happened here in Omaha.

Its arrival is triggered when chlorophyll makes itself present, ready to assume its energy-producing role in photosynthesis. That's about all I know about it, and that it produces a great by-product called oxygen!

I am not a natural scientist. I was scared away by the details of it all. Instead, I eventually chose to be a social scientist, meaning I observe people. The crazy thing is that I wish I had paid more attention to those natural science classes because science presents such rich metaphors that aid in helping us understand social interaction and behaviors. Who knew? Well, I didn't until I had lived about half my life.

Yesterday, on NPR's Morning Edition I heard this beautiful interview with a natural scientist and author of a new book called Lab Girl. Her name is Hope Jahren.  The interviewer, Renee Montagne, read an elegant line from the book: A leaf is a platter of pigments strung with vascular lace. Man, I wish I could write like that! The richness of comparing it to a platter holding pigments is not a common observation. Comparing the leaf to lace as if it were a material from which you would make a garment or tablecloth is splendid.

As it turns out, Hope Jahren is an extraordinary person who sees the world in a different way, a way that seems to offer an enlightened perspective on some dark topics in life like depression and the anxiety of the hard work of problem solving.

Whenever I read the work of someone like this I am reminded of what must have been the Maker's intention for how we should live our lives. I cannot make a leaf. I am pretty good at ignoring them, or cursing them when I must rake them into a pile in the Fall. Yet, everyday I do benefit from the oxygen they produce and am soothed by the unique color they bring to our world.

It is so easy to apprehend a book these days ... a couple of keystrokes and that sucker is captured on my iPad all ready for me to devour. So, I share with you another lovely passage of Hope Jahren opining on the challenge all scientists face—both natural and social—that is making the complex simple. She writes: Science has taught me that everything is more complicated than we first assume, and that being able to derive happiness from discovery is a recipe for a beautiful life.

Thanks, Lab Girl, for reminding me why I love teaching and learning. It is about making the complex simple and reveling in the insight or idea that learning and teaching produce.

Here is to all graduates, present, past and future. May you always remember the first value of learning is learning how to learn.