Mr. McClusky was my favorite math teacher in high school. He had a ruddy complexion, wore wire rims, and his reddish-blonde crew cut gave off almost a gold halo. He had the body of a retired linebacker, fit but imposing. Sporting my high school's branded green polo he walked around every day high-fiving and dapping up anyone in his path. He knew everyone’s name, but usually called you by your last name.
McClusky infused his lectures with stories about seemingly mundane suburban life like walks with his family through our hometown arboretum, recounting in awe new types of trees and flowers. Sometimes he spoke of the world at large like his volunteer trips to South Africa, where he’d bring interested students every other year.
McClusky was open about his sobriety from drinking and shared his story in various ways, always lightly and without judgment. As a room full of teens, I assume he knew a handful of us were experimenting. We used to joke that he was high. When I look back now, to imbue that zest daily into dry classes as trig or geometry feels like some sort of sorcery.
I still think about his lesson, “It’s not a tsunami,” whenever I get caught up in something that feels momentarily overwhelming and hard to take on, but what I remember most is his unequivocal fervor for life.
Mr. McClusky is a living embodiment to the antidote of “languishing.” Languishing is what psychologists call the middle child of mental health. Sitting between thriving and depression is this feeling of stagnation and indifference. The term became popular this year. A bit of emptiness, a bit of anxiousness, a wading through. 1
The opposite is what I’m calling the McClusky high, an energized calm. How do we find it?
One of the most famous photographs in the world might surprise you; “Nautilus” is a 1930’s photograph by Edward Winston of a shell. What interested me is why Weston made it. He was moved one day by witnessing the paintings of seashells by painter Henrietta Shore. It was the first time Weston saw a Chambered Nautilus, and he was…taken. He got to work, experimenting until he ran out of money for the film, and released what he had. Nautilus was born. 2
Food writer and author Rachel Reichl wrote a story recently of how her career started. She was an art history major. One day her class studied Cézanne’s Apples, and as she studied the painting she suddenly “felt cold.” When she walked home confused, deciding if she wanted to study art at all, Reichl passed a grocery store and noticed a display of apples.
“They were beautiful; astonishing, in fact. But I had no desire to contemplate those apples; all I wanted to do was eat them.” She went home and made an apple crumble. “I still don’t like Cézanne as much as I think I should. But I am very grateful to him. Had I not encountered his apples on an autumn afternoon in Ann Arbor, I would probably be teaching art history today.” 34
Everyone is inspired differently, and so is their antidote to stagnation, and their way of finding that spark. It matters because a sense of meaning or mastery is vital to living a fulfilling life. When we’re feeling lost, dull, or demotivated it’s hard to know where to place our attention or how to find what stimulates us in sustaining ways, especially with the internet drawing us in every day muddling our senses.
To reignite the “McClusky high” there needs to be space. Space from seemingly stimulating things but potentially numbing things. How are you numbing? How are you re-energizing?
Time in nature, an hour in a museum, a walk through a park, a trip to the farmer’s market, a dance class, a fiction book, a play, a concert. Switch it up, to me stimulation is found through change. Surprise can lead to joy. Especially if we stay present and curious, we might be surprised at what lights us up. xx
I call this, Lemon. Oct 2021
Edward Weston’s, Nautilus, The Daybooks of Edward Weston
How Cezanne’s Apples Turned Me into a Food Writer, Rachel Reichl