Human beings can explore space, cure disease, climb mountains, and compose epics, but one thing they cannot do is force a change in the internal world of another human. You and I cannot force a change in the hearts of the students on our rosters — nor could Gandhi, nor could King.
This is an amazing, profound limitation just as it is an amazing, profound source of agency.
We can do two things with this lack of omnipotence: hate it or relish it.
Hating it doesn't seem to do much. It often leads to one of our most common, frustration-mongering activities: complaining.
- “I did X in my class, and the students still did Y!”
- “I called home, but it didn't help!”
- “I used the nine moves for teaching with texts, but the students still didn't read it!”
Relishing it, on the other hand, starts to change the game. It gives us resilience.
I say we work to relish it. We accept it as the constraint that it is, and then we work within that constraint to discover and master the very real ways in which human beings can influence the hearts of others.
After all, both Gandhi and King could not directly change the hearts of a single human being — yet by their words and deeds, countless thousands changed.