In the process of editing this book, I met weekly with Jim Lang, author of the original Small Teaching. I had come to look forward to our Monday afternoon Zoom sessions. Jim has an innate gift for providing feedback in the gentle and encouraging manner to which I am most receptive. It wasn't all citations and commas. Sometimes it was fun. On Monday, October 11, we decided on the cover design. On Monday, October 18, we discussed our endorser wish list. Then, on Monday, October 25, for the first time ever, Jim didn't show. I thought it was odd that Jim would miss a meeting, but at the time, I was preoccupied.

When people ask if my husband and I are planning to start a family, he likes to wink and say, “We're in the market.” It always gets a laugh and avoids the awkward alternative of me barking back something like, “WE ARE TRYING, OKAY? Mind your own business!”

Anyways, in the midst of “trying” I had gotten into the habit of taking a monthly pregnancy test. On October 18, I got home from school, peed on the stick, set it on the back of the toilet, and promptly forgot. At‐home tests take about five minutes to formulate a result and by October, I had gotten enough negatives that I no longer bothered waiting around to witness my fate.

Imagine my surprise, when my husband emerged from the bathroom hours later looking like he had tangoed with a ghost. “What does it mean if it says ‘pregnant’?” he asked me, brandishing the plastic stick like a magic wand.

“It means I'm pregnant,” I told him.

“There's not supposed to be a plus or a minus or something?” he asked.

I shook my head, no. We had a big group hug with our golden retriever, danced around the living room, and submerged ourselves in the filmy haze of new baby bliss.

Jim missed another meeting on Monday, October 25, and then again on November 1. If I'm being honest, I was too absorbed in the awe of my pregnant body to feel overly worried. I thought maybe the universe had sensed I needed a break from editing to focus on this new stage of life. As Princeton Professor of Psychology Tania Lombrozo's research shows in Chapter 8, storytelling helps us extract order and regularity from situations that might otherwise feel unsettling. I told myself a sensible story, assuming Jim was just busy with his own writing project and would get back to me as soon as he could. I zipped him a short email with the subject line “Checking In.” Still nothing.

On November 8, I finally heard back—but not from Jim. The email that arrived from his account read as follows:

Sarah,

This is Jim's brother Tom unfortunately Jim is in the hospital and will be there for some time. We will know more next week and will keep you updated.

Thanks

Tom

At that point, I became concerned.

As my own body began the hard work of assembling a tiny human, Jim's body was breaking down. He had developed a severe case of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart. One doctor reportedly told him, “You now have a useless pound of muscle sitting where your beating heart used to be.” I'm sure that came as a comfort. (Might I suggest a bedside manner simulation exercise like the one discussed in Chapter 9? Just a thought.)

Jim spent months on life support at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, surrounded by his children and his incredible wife, Anne, whom you met in the Introduction to this book. Then, on December 21, Jim underwent a transplant, providing him with a fully functioning heart. I am proud to share that as I write this, he is doing well and in full recovery. I can only hope my own family will possess the love, dedication, and purpose that the Langs have shown over the last few months.

I am so grateful for the guidance and support Jim has given me in my career. He is not only an expert on the science of learning, he is also an unshakable force of light and positivity. The human brain is complex and scientific business, but if there's one thing my research for this book has taught me, it's the importance of self‐transcendent purpose. Jim's unwavering dedication to the field of education is a powerful inspiration. As we learned in Chapter 8, cultivating a sense of purpose can happen in three ways: gradual self‐discovery, a major life event, or drawing inspiration from someone else's example. In the process of writing this book, Jim provided me with all three of these experiences and he has given me a whole new understanding of what it means to learn something by heart.