“Change is not scary,” we hear as Teacher flies into the classroom. The lone dragonfly buzzes over each of us before hovering in mid-air over the stage at the front of the room.
This is always my favorite part of being his student, watching his transformation. Something like a brisk wind wraps him in its vortex and a small tornado swirls ever so briefly before it pulls back to reveal the man — taller than most men I’ve ever seen. Today, he’s dressed very casually in blue jeans and a gray T-shirt with a purple lightning bolt emblazoned on the chest. On his head he wears a simple baseball cap. Purple, of course.
“Good morning, dear students. I hope you’re ready for a workout today,” he says, fists on hips, chin jutting out in proud defiance.
“Workout? What the –”
All eyes turn to the complainant, awake and alert in his seat at the back of the class. Irreverent Student’s grumble is interrupted by what sounds like a baby wailing.
When all eyes return to the front of the room, the complaints end. Sitting at Teacher’s desk, tugging on a purple pacifier on a brilliant blue cord attached to his purple Barney the Dinosaur T-shirt, the source of that ear-piercing screech locks his piercing eyes with mine.
The recognition is instantaneous. Only then do I realize our teacher is missing.
“Teacher?” In a daze I approach the babe, who is growing in front of my eyes. “What happened?”
In response, Teacher, who is now a rugrat, yanks a purple lollipop from his mouth and releases a string of incomprehensible words through lips turned blue by the dyed sugar.
“What the … heck?” Irreverent Student repeats his comment and edits it for this younger audience. “This is our teacher? What’s this lesson supposed to be?”
“No clue,” Clyde shrugs. He turns toward me and Hope, kneeling in front of the now five-year-old Teacher.
“I am still the being you know as Teacher,” the child releases a string of words similar in intonation to the ones he had released as a toddler, except now we can understand. “There will come a time when you will be asked to change. To transform.”
As he grows into a seven-year-old Little League baseball player, he walks around the room, tossing a baseball into the air and catching it with a weathered leather glove a few sizes too big.
“You will have the memories of the being you were before, but you will feel different. Your vibrations will be different. You will move at a faster speed that the rest of reality.” He throws the ball toward the whiteboard then runs at a speed almost as fast as light to catch the ball as it bounces off the board. “Kind of like a kid with ADHD!”
The pre-pubescent Teacher stands on top of the desk. “Are you with me now, class?”
I don’t get it.
He jumps through the air and lands on the floor just past the steps to his stage. Turning, he gauges how close he came to killing himself (as if he could.) “Cool!” Teacher says to no one in particular before running up to me. Then, his face in mine, “What cha talking ’bout, Writer?”
“Well, you’re being so random today,” I say. “I mean, more than usual.”
He laughs, his hot, bubble-gum breath fogging my glasses before he finally steps out of my personal space. Then, as he climbs the steps back up to the stage, every step becomes a year so that, by the time he’s at his desk, our teacher looks like one of us. Teacher spreads his arms as if they are wings. Amazingly, they don’t change.
“So how about that for a massive transformation,” Teacher laughs.
“What’s the lesson today, Teach?”
“You are not conscious of the changes your body goes through as you grow from an embryo, which I wasn’t going to show you!” He pulls the stool from behind his lectern and sits, hooking his feet on the rungs on either side. “Life is defined by change, and yet many are frightened of the thought. Do you not realize what you’ve already gone through?”
Hope starts to raise her hand in a question, but Teacher is on a roll.
“There are so many more changes waiting for you around the corner of your development, dear Students. You, too, are growing through a vortex of transformation, but you are unaware because your change goes so slowly in order to allow you time to accept things. What would happen if each of you were to transform as rapidly as I did during today’s class?”
By now, Teacher is back to being the man we know him to be. His strong arms hold a brilliant blue globe at chest level. “This transformation you saw today goes on every second in every corner of your Earth with every living creature that is part of the cycle of life on this beautiful planet.” He walks away from the world, leaving it rotating alone in front of the board.
“Change is scary only because you don’t see it for what it is. It is just creation stepping from one side of the room to the other.” Suddenly, he’s standing next to Irreverent, who jumps at the shock as Teacher pops into the space next to his elbow.
“You, my students, are in this school, in my class, to help you accept the transformation that is going on within you, but you don’t need me. You could do this on your own if you only learned to accept the changes going on within you, within your society.”
Suddenly, he’s back at the front of the room with a pointer, randomly pointing out places around the globe. “Don’t you see the changes already going on around you? The people unsatisfied with the way their governments are ruling? That is change. That is transformation, and that transformation is simply imitating the transformation going on within you.”
With a wave of his hand, the room disappears. We are now in an open field of green grass and purple flowers. In the distance, under a spreading Banyan tree, a bull sits, contemplating the beauty around him like that story from my childhood. But in our immediate area, a carnival is vibrating. Ferris wheels, roller coasters, merry-go-rounds. Barkers calling out their wares, inviting us to play their games. The smells of the party are rich — corn on the cob, cotton candy, candied apples, meat-on-a-stick.
“This is for you, my students. This festival is what awaits you as you continue your slow and steady transformation. Enjoy!”
And, with that, class is over for today, but the joy that surrounds us and vibrates within us will keep us strong as we continue this change he has explained. We know that waiting for us at the end of this extended process is something glorious.
I can’t wait!
Until next time, my friends, I remain, ever faithfully,
The Dragonfly’s Student
The Dragonfly's Student 