S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 2 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 1 6 2 7 Sharon Lauricella 4.2 Responses and Reciprocity While about 60% of the total recipients of my acknowledgement letters responded in some way to the letters, the remaining 40% did not. The rather large proportion of non-respondees correlates to the high proportion of students acknowledged in this project; if current students are removed from the data, then 79% of recipients of my acknowledgement letters responded directly. There are two possibilities for this outcome: current students may not have felt comfortable responding, or they did not feel the need to do so. Of the 18 current students who did respond to the letter that I wrote to them, all but one were fourth year students. In other words, of the 58 current students who received acknowledgement letters, 40 were first year students and 18 were fourth year students. Of the first year students, only one responded. This lends evidence to the premise that students may not have been comfortable responding directly to me as their instructor; fourth year students would arguably feel more experience in communicating with professors and may have been more willing to express their feelings upon receipt of a handwritten letter. All but one of the colleagues to whom I wrote responded to my acknowledgement letters. It is perhaps more appropriate that a colleague would respond, for as adults in the same academic arena and as professionals, a response likely felt right for such recipients. I was particularly taken with the response from academics with whom I had never met; what ensued was correspondence characterized by humility, kindness, and open-heartedness. Given that acknowledgement by written letter is unusual, as is acknowledgement from someone the recipient had never met, I expect that many colleagues felt compelled to reach out in response. I also enclosed my business card with email and web address in order that the recipient could explore my identity and contact me if desired. Like colleagues, almost all yoga friends responded to my letters. I was also not surprised by this outcome, for the yoga community in which I participate is highly communicative and positive. Only one yoga friend did not reply, and it may even be that the letter never reached him. My friend Lauren remarked how thoughtful was my letter, and Jamie, the artist, told me that it was just what she needed at the time because she was feeling in a creative rut. To my surprise, none of the business owners responded to the acknowledgement letters that they received, and neither parents of students to whom I wrote responded. And yet, I suggest that receiving a response from a recipient of my letter is actually not terribly important. Certainly it is considered good manners to respond in some way to a com- municative act. However, it is entirely plausible that the recipient, having internalized my letter, then communicated in a positive way to or for someone else, a la “pay it forward”. In this case, I would have no way of knowing what impact my letter had upon the recipient (I suppose it is possible that the answer could be “none”, though given that when current students are removed from the data, nearly 80% of people replied, this appears unlikely). I am therefore in keeping with Levinas (1984), who argues that it is the responsibility of, for example, an instructor, to teach both with and without reciprocity. Further, and perhaps more importantly, I also felt the effects of writing a letter: I was able to express my appreciation, admiration, or respect for someone, and then know that I ex- pressed what I wanted and needed to do. Weingarten and Worthen (2009) suggest that the mutuality of acknowledgement is important in ensuring that the giver of an acknowledgement is aware that the recipient is appreciative; this reciprocity is an “incentive to use acknowledgement” (Weingarten and Worthen 2009, 32). I respectfully disagree. Having done this experiment for five months, I did not feel rejected or even discouraged if someone did not reply. Certainly it was pleasant to receive an unexpected letter or digitally-mediated message. However, this was not my expectation. I wished only to feel complete in my expression of acknowledgement from myself. Another potential explanation for the more frequent response on the part of colleagues, friends, and non-students in this experiment is that the act of acknowledgement is a means of spiritual communication. Acknowledgement expresses admiration and respect, and is an explicit recognition of the interconnectedness of the author and the recipient. In this case, the other adults in my life are peers, and thus may have felt more comfortable responding to a spiritually communicative act. Given that friends from my yoga studio and others who know me well are aware of my spiritual outlook, a gesture of spiritual communication would not have seemed out of place. Students, however, have a limited knowledge of my personal life, and quite likely have a less intent willingness to connect on a spiritual level with their instructor. While current literature (Baesler 2015a, 2015b) suggests that students and faculty can and do connect spiritually in an educational setting, a public, secular institution is arguably not fertile ground for developing spiritual communication between students and faculty.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzgxMzI=