As I ran through the tall tree forests of Quadra Island as a young child, with the summer sun warming the earth to emit the sweet smell of Fir needles, life seemed to be full of possibility. I was at one with my existence. I was confident. The future was my own to shape.
There’s a lot of years between Quadra Island and now. In those years are a lot of stories, but suffice to say, I’ve had some success in life.
In my twenties, I studied computer systems technology and received a diploma. Upon completion of the diploma, I entered into a business partnership which flourished nearly twenty years. As we were preparing to close our business in 2021, after years of struggles a result of market and economic shifts, I reached out to a former instructor, now Chair of the Computer Science Department at Camosun College, asking for a reference.
She didn’t say “yes”.
Instead, she asked “Why?” and then “Do you want to teach?”
How does one shift from a 20 year career to teaching? A quote from We Bought A Zoo explains how.
You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.
― Benjamin Mee, We Bought a Zoo
I think about this quote when I think back to my first day teaching. It was a day filled with nerves and excitement and possibility.
One might argue that it can take a great physical effort to cross a threshold from the past to the future. Another might argue that it is the struggle in the mind that is what must first be overcome before the greatest steps of all, the first step, is taken.
Whether you were a new student that first day, or a new instructor, it was indeed that… a “first day”. A hundred new moments of possibility scattered amongst a hundred more of terror: “what on earth have I gotten myself into” was I’m sure a common thought.
Again, that thought could be from the student, or the instructor.
I can tell you that, because I was both a student in the same classrooms that I now teach, some twenty years previous, as well as the new instructor that crossed a threshold into realizing my own potential in 2021.
It took twenty seconds. It took twenty years.
It took twenty seconds to get my heart to something south of 175 beats per minute to begin my introductory lecture on Computer Technology Essentials.
It took twenty years to feel like I had enough experience to be able to get in front of a group of 40 students themselves embarking on a new journey.
As they say, often it is the first step that is the hardest — there were a lot of challenging first steps in the first couple of weeks teaching. I felt like I was dropped in to the deep end of the pool and that I was moments away from drowning.
But now three years beyond that terrifying first day, I can whole heartedly say that it was one of the best decision I had made in my entire life.
You see, I am a sucker for inspirational and motivational YouTube videos — my heart grows when I envision someone maximizing their potential because of just making a decision and staying the course. I, however, never felt that I had a vehicle that could allow me to be the person my five year old self would be proud of. And then, would I have the courage to live up to my own potential.
That’s it, right there: I never felt that I lived up to what 5 year old Brandon would be proud to have learned he would grow into.
Yes, I had made some smart business decisions. Yes, I had built relationships. Yes, I had grown a family. Yes, I had fostered a loving home. By many measuring sticks, I was a success.
But by my own assessment, I had not lived up to an unspoken promise to my 5-year-old self that I would “be more” and live a life of positive impact.
While often I did run through the forest on Quadra Island, there was this other memory of when I was only six, my father allowed me to take our little boat out, alone, from the dock, around a buoy some 50 meters away, pilot the boat back, and dock it with no assistance. I was insistent that I could do it. I think my father was crazy. In that moment, I’m certain that he was terrified — both if he didn’t allow me to do it, and what denying me would do to my confidence, as well as if he did allow me to do it if something were to go wrong.
I’m pretty certain it would now be considered child endangerment to allow me to pilot the boat by myself.
But, as I’m sure you realize, I survived, and my mother never learned about it until many MANY years later. And it is a memory I cherish to this day.
Was I terrified? Nope. I was 100% confident. I knew how to pilot the boat as I had done it many times before on my father’s lap. But, I was only five.
Yet, some 40 years later, only a couple of years after my father had passed, I was terrified of piloting a life of realized potential, stepping before 40 students to deliver a subject that I was more than qualified to each. Somewhere in the preceding four decades, I had lost my courage.
But, as Benjamin Mee says, “all it takes is 20 seconds of insane courage”. It was those 20 seconds, in front of that class of students who were also being brave on their own journey of exploration, that changed my life trajectory.
You see, I no longer fear trying new things. In fact, I now look for them, as it is within those new experiences that we find possibility.