Last week, students in my Business English course were required to come to my office for one-on-one conferences. Since it was just the second week of the semester and nearly all of them only recently arrived in the States, this was my first time to really talk with most of them extensively. To a person, I was struck by how sweet and thoughtful they are…and by how unique each of them is.

I thought I would be worn out by the long day of intensive communication, but it didn’t drain me nearly as much as I’d expected. At first I thought this was because we’d found lots of areas for connection: similar hobbies or interests, places we had both traveled to or places we both dreamed of visiting, special needs or questions they had that I felt very comfortable in discussing…

Later, however, I realized it was more than that. There came a moment in each meeting when I looked into a student’s eyes and the beauty – the gift – of their most basic being hit me. 

I’d like to call this a “heartbeat moment”: the instant (whether we grasp it consciously or not) when we look at a person near us and we acknowledge that they are a person, that they are living, breathing, feeling, and deserving of basic respect and in need of love.

I reflected further on those encounters and smiled at the thought of how meaningful our next class session will likely feel for me. It may not be that much different for the students, but when I look out at their faces, I will see individual marvels with individual stories that I now know more of.

This thought also comes with a challenge: to keep that heartbeat moment alive through the term and remember the humanity of these students when making various planning and grading decisions later. And it comes with a jolt of responsibility: to keep tender eyes open so that I am primed for more “heartbeat moments” with those I encounter daily – especially those I am more likely to overlook when life gets busy and distractions (and prejudices) might cloud my heart vision.