The Practice of Being Real

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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The Practice of Being Real

As the sun cannot withhold its light, we cannot withhold what feels real. – Mark Nepo

The Existential Project and the Practice of Being Real

The existential project is central to being real. We all have a project. The project expands individual experience to a communal level. The project connects us with ourselves and our world. Existentialists discuss our project in terms of transcendence, in which an individual is a change agent completing a task at hand. An individual transcends the self in the work to be done. In transcending the self in pursuit of our project, we are real. I tend to think of the project as the path we must take. Our project does have to be huge. Our project is what we can not not do. Our project must be tended, because it is delicate. Our project must not be silenced, because it must sing. Our project must be joyful, in the truest sense of joy. It is vital like breath.

Our projects are real.

We need to know our stories before we know our project. We must know our project before we are real. Think about it. I know when I have been real throughout my life. I often return to those same real things. I know when I feel real. When I am real, the hours fly and and there is nothing or nowhere else I could/would rather be. When I am real, do not have to struggle to focus, or if I do, the struggle quickly ends in a flood of purpose. Our projects wake us up. That is real.

Our world demands real.

There is no other time than now to be real. What does being real look like? Mission-driven business people meeting the needs of a community. Artists who demonstrate what it means to communicate at the level of the soul. Teachers who shape the future. Doctors who make us well. The world needs people to build and serve and lead and love. The world needs compassion, vulnerability and courage. That is real.