But no -- I take your meaning, and you deserve a better answer than flippancy, particularly given how often I bemoan the process to you. The answer, sadly, is something I find very difficult to put into words -- practice, I suppose, and the experience of having seen a bit of nurturing pay off in spades over and over again, has given me the sixth sense for which ones might be worth tending. I look for the ones who know the hunger -- whether the hunger for the Arts, or a different form of hunger entirely -- and see whether that hunger can be channelled into something that might be of use in the future; I look for the clever ones who are not given room to be clever, and promise them I might give their cleverness a home; I look for the ones who are an ill fit in the roles the trajectories of their lives have dictated thus far and show them ways in which they might stretch their wings in a different shape.
I know you often find people a mystery, my dearest of children, but it is my experience that the ones who will pay the greatest rewards are often shouting so, loudly, to anyone who has ears to listen -- and many of the children are at the age where they are casting about for their purpose, and in any group of children of that particular age, there are always at least a handful who are blades waiting for the right hand to temper them. The trick is spotting the ones who will respond well to me, and which are the ones best left for another. (But as we all know, I am greedy when it comes to casting my net widely.) They may not all repay my attentions properly, but I can have patience.
You, on the other hand, repaid my efforts nearly immediately -- and continue to do so, lapushka -- which is why I write you when I am in need of reminding that the teacher's art has its rewards as well as its trials.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-03-06 03:57 am (UTC)But no -- I take your meaning, and you deserve a better answer than flippancy, particularly given how often I bemoan the process to you. The answer, sadly, is something I find very difficult to put into words -- practice, I suppose, and the experience of having seen a bit of nurturing pay off in spades over and over again, has given me the sixth sense for which ones might be worth tending. I look for the ones who know the hunger -- whether the hunger for the Arts, or a different form of hunger entirely -- and see whether that hunger can be channelled into something that might be of use in the future; I look for the clever ones who are not given room to be clever, and promise them I might give their cleverness a home; I look for the ones who are an ill fit in the roles the trajectories of their lives have dictated thus far and show them ways in which they might stretch their wings in a different shape.
I know you often find people a mystery, my dearest of children, but it is my experience that the ones who will pay the greatest rewards are often shouting so, loudly, to anyone who has ears to listen -- and many of the children are at the age where they are casting about for their purpose, and in any group of children of that particular age, there are always at least a handful who are blades waiting for the right hand to temper them. The trick is spotting the ones who will respond well to me, and which are the ones best left for another. (But as we all know, I am greedy when it comes to casting my net widely.) They may not all repay my attentions properly, but I can have patience.
You, on the other hand, repaid my efforts nearly immediately -- and continue to do so, lapushka -- which is why I write you when I am in need of reminding that the teacher's art has its rewards as well as its trials.
Your,
T