NOVEMBER 14, FRIDAY

ZOOM CALL RESPONSE

Another thing that happened to me during this ZOOM call yesterday was a sense of validation. Several in the group had been back to India, often several times, and others had gone on to travel extensively in other parts of the world. One adopted an Indian child, another married a Japanese woman. The trip had changed the trajectory of their lives. They credited me, but all I did was to persuade them that India was a wondrous place that would change their lives, it wasn’t me that changed their lives, it was the deep experience of India. But it was also a validation for me that the thing that I must enjoyed while teaching at Warren Wilson, leading about 15 student groups to India for two or four months, every two years was worth doing. In no other class that I taught 50 years ago have the students wanted to have a ZOOM reunion. I doubt if students in other classes even remember our classes together, I don’t. But this group was really impacted, they remember, and so do I. The effort of making these many trips to India was worth it. I feel, as my friend Dean Kahl remarked when I mentioned this ZOOM meeting to my Friday Old Man’s Group, validated, which is a nice feeling for an old man to have.