
IT’S HARD BEING A HUMAN BEING
First published April 30, 2016 in The Gallup Independent as a "Religious Perspectives" column. Some minor changes have been made.
It was about 6 pm, and we had two more hours to go. I stood in the hallway with one of my students and another teacher. It was the mid-evening break at our afternoon and evening high school. The young man said, “Yeah, I worked all day scraping tar and gravel off a roof. When I get home, I want to read a story to my son, but I’m already so tired.” His face was weathered dark, with a light beige mask around his eyes where sunglasses had screened his skin. He went on, “I’m trying to help my family in Mexico and support my own little family. And I want to graduate.” Saul wasn’t complaining, just telling it like it was.
I put my hand on his shoulder and said only, “It’s hard being a human being.” I said it so often to my students. Sometimes I added, “And it’s even harder being a teenager.”
When my daughter was a junior in high school, we signed up to Read More