As though his life depended on it

Coach Lyndon Johnson with his Sam Houston High School debate team in Houston in 1931. Left to right: Luther E. Jones, Margaret Epley, LBJ, Evelyn Lee, and Gene Latimer. Photo courtesy LBJ Library and Museum.

In The Path to Power, by Robert Caro

Johnson accepted a school teaching job in a Houston High School teaching public speaking and coaching debate.  He "took on the task as though the future of America depended on what he taught those children."

The passage goes on to detail how he worked tirelessly and ingeniously to train a debate team that trains and travels and wins the city debate championship for the first time.  

He was relentless in training students.  One student said "He made you feel important just because he's nagging at you so much.  He's throwing his whole self into improving you."  Another student said, "He did that job as if his life depended on it."

The passage describes his techniques, like asking every student, on the first day, 

to stand in front of the class and "make noises" for ten seconds... any noises.  The next day it was thirty seconds and the noises had to be animal noises: roar like a lion, quack like a duck.  "He was trying to get people to feel comfortable on the podium, to make the whole thing such a game that no one would feel embarrassed.  He'd do it with smiling and laughter to make you feel at ease '  Everybody's going to do it, so don't worry about it-- just have fun.' And we did.  Even the shy kids did. There was a feeling that we're all comrades, we're all going to be doing these silly things, so we were all together in it.  And everyone would laugh."  Then came speeches -- first, thirty seconds, "very short, and on so limited a topic that you wouldn't be scared." Then a minute, and then five minutes. Speech no longer extemporaneous, but prepared, and prepared thoroughly. "I have a memory of an enormous number of assignments," says one student. "And he was terribly strict about you doing them." Says another: "We had to do more reading for Mr. Johnson's courses than all the rest of my courses combined."

I love the phrases that describe LBJ's spirit -- "as though the future of America depended on what he taught the children" and "did that job as though his life depended on it."  

It reminds me both of Ada Limon's poem "The Other Wish," ("what's your brilliant, glaring wattage?") and  John Kabat-Zinn's regular meditation instruction to breath with intention and purpose "as though your life depended on it... because it does."