ERIC: The Man, The Myth, The Legend

Eric must have been an all-star teacher. I’m talking as Gandhi is to India, as Oprah is to talk shows, as Chanel is to my mother, Eric seems to have been to Baharn 1. He’s a legend. I can tell because his name is everywhere. I’m a mildly competitive individual, so naturally as the new kid on the block, looking to make a splash in my teaching debut, I engaged in an unspoken, metaphorical teaching competition with this Eric character. Unfortunately, I was playing 1 v 1 teacher-ball against the Michael Jordan of ESL. “Welcome to ERIC!” reads a huge, beautiful banner in our foreign language office. There wasn’t a banner for my arrival, but if there had been, I’m sure it would be displayed as prominently. I’m guessing Eric was the first Western teacher at Banharn. And maybe he was quite a catch for a rural public school, with extensive teaching experience or an excessive fortune, perhaps? Maybe he used a negligible portion of that fortune to purchase a boat load of English language resources for the school. After all, most of the workbooks and textbooks that clutter our office are emblazoned with his name, shouting my ineptitude to no end. He was probably exceptionally pale and abnormally tall, making him devilishly handsome by default. As I spun this story of the enigmatic Eric, my patience for him dwindled.

One fateful morning, I found a binder of worksheets on my desk. Eric’s name sneered up at me from the spine. Just before the exasperated question, “who is this Eric!?” escaped my lips, I got my answer. The front of the binder revealed my opponent’s identity. ERIC: English Resource and Information Center. Eric’s not a person. He’s a place. My confusion cleared and my cheeks flushed. I’d been losing a one-sided competition to an acronym. For weeks.

I too often slip into these silly competitions. Eric, of all people, taught me that. Our society makes it so easy to compare and compete. Class rank, GPA, goals scored, dollars saved, degrees earned, miles travelled, BBMs received, football players befriended, real estate purchased, Facebook friends acquired. Some of it’s legitimate and some of it’s ludicrous. We have been created for things greater than these. Not just to be a number in the world. I forgot that. And it had me feeling inferior to an acronym for far too long. Eric will always be out there. Smarter, richer, and more popular than I am, but that’s okay. I wish him the best and return to my pursuit of greater things with renewed focus.  I still wince inwardly when I catch a glimpse of Eric’s omnipresent name, not because he’s creaming me in the Teacher Olympics, but because he reminds me of my own tendency to strive for victory, rather than excellence. I’m learning though, so ERIC has found a way, in only four letters, to impart some wisdom after all. He’s a master of brevity.

The Rules

Sarah-Graham Turtletaub is a conversational genius. I’ve never met someone so adept at getting strangers to pour their hearts out in a matter of minutes. The secret to her success? Ask questions. Meaningful questions. Ones with answers that give you a glimpse into who someone really is. My current favorite is, “if you could do anything for a living, what would you do? Don’t be practical, don’t be shy, just dream big.” On January 1st of this new year, my friend Vi beat me to the punch and asked our lovable, ragtag group of friends, “what’s your dream job?” The answers that followed were fantastic. Sunk low in a colorful beach chair on the shore of a tiny island south of Bangkok, I listened to seven people give raw, honest responses to a question that really requires you to bare a piece of your soul. Vulnerability is necessary and optimism is key. Among the tremendous answers, from a Californian bro with an internal Rosetta Stone and an outlook eerily similar to my brother Ian’s, was the idea of using his connection and appreciation for nature combined with his knack for picking up foreign language to lead wilderness excursions in the States for international visitors. Brilliant. The South African, rugby-playing bloke who sat to my left sipping a Chang would love to apply his fine arts degree at a place like Pixar. An oxymoron that makes perfect sense. Is that a paradox? People are just continually surprising me here, with their wealth of life experience and diversity of passions. Every conversation seems to serve as a reminder that you really don’t know anything about anyone. You can be so certain that you have someone figured out and then they throw this curveball about their vision for the future and you're back to square one, which is usually where you belong anyway, I guess. From square one, I know that the Brit that rounded out this circle of comrades is from Manchester. He’s an avid United fan. I am constantly laughing in his presence and he lives by two rules.

Rule Number One: Its only paper.

Rule Number Two: It’s not where you are, but who you're with.

He’s mostly joking when he demands our adherence to these laws, but I so often find wisdom in his silliness. Money is only paper, but it can be traded for greater things. A ticket to Thailand, a meal for a monk, an education, or a beachside feast with a bunch of dreamers. Because it’s not where you are, but who you're with. I sat down to lunch that day with seven goofballs I’d met at orientation, traded some paper for some grub, and stood up an hour later with a National Geographic photographer, a professor of industrial engineering, an employee of the National Basketball Association, a cross-cultural wildlife excursion guide, a student ambassador at a Thai university, a writer for a comedy series, and one of the creative minds behind Pixar. Not too shabby.