If Just One Person--A Paragraph a Day

I had a very negative experience today, unfortunately.  We had a pep rally at the high school where I teach, and because of rain they had to move it indoors to the gym.  In all their wisdom, the people in charge decided to still have the yelling contest between the classes, even though we were indoors.  They even had a monitor with which they could measure the intensity of the noise in decibels.  Several of us teachers were a bit appalled at the idea, because we know what kind of damage high levels of noise can cause, especially in an enclosed space, but really no one wanted to hear from us--after all, sometimes looking out for the welfare of young people interferes with things like school spirit, and we couldn't have that.  In short, over the next 45 minutes or so, at least five students came literally stumbling out of the gym, their hands over their ears.  One girl was in tears.  They measured the highest decibel level at 118, and the CDC says that at 120 decibels, permanent hearing loss can occur almost instantly.  In my mind, if even one student loses any hearing at all due to a silly contest to see which group of people can yell loudest, then a huge disservice has been done.  It was frustrating to watch young people being subjected to a potentially dangerous situation just because it happens to be homecoming week and no one tried to come up with alternate activities that wouldn't have been nearly as dangerous.  But this is our world, isn't it?  So many decisions are made for the sake of making things easier for everyone, and the decision to have 800 kids yelling as loudly as they could indoors was not a good one, but it was one that I could do absolutely nothing about.  If one kid's hearing was damaged today, then the whole thing simply wasn't worth it.

Authenticity--A Paragraph a Day

My wife and I are watching a television series that takes place on the Navajo Nation.  It turns out that none of the main actors are even Navajo, and most of the series wasn't even filmed on the Navajo Nation.  It's rather disappointing to find out that something that I thought was authentic, isn't.  And it gets me to thinking about other people whom I've known who I thought were one thing, but who turned out to be something else.  In the end, I learned that I couldn't trust the person they seemed to be because they were really quite different than they led me to believe they were.  Authenticity and trust are two concepts that are firmly intertwined, and when we as people lose our authenticity, or when we present an inauthentic self to other people, we should be neither surprised nor upset when others start to mistrust us.  I want to be authentic because I want other people to trust me, especially my students, and I can't expect them to trust me if I'm not honest with them.  I consider authenticity to be staying true to my morals and ethics, speaking the truth, and acting with integrity--if I don't believe in a certain something, I shouldn't say I do just to make someone else happy.  My authentic self is a gift that I've been given and that I spend my life uncovering, and I want to be true to that authenticity so that others know that they can trust me to be true no matter what the circumstances.  In a world full of people pretending to be something they're not, it is a difficult and daunting task, but it most certainly is possible.

Things Don't Always Go Our Way--A Paragraph a Day

It might be nice if things went the ways that we want them to go much more often than they do, wouldn't it?  This is what we tend to think because if things went the ways we wanted them to, then we'd face much less stress when we had to deal with things that run counter to our wishes or our expectations.  After all, if things aren't going well at work, I may have to deal with this fact by trying to change those things, working with them and becoming unhappy at my job, or even leaving the job for something else.  If things change in ways that force us to compromise our ideals or principles, for example, leaving a job may become absolutely necessary for our peace of mind.  But most things aren't that important.  Many things are simply annoyances or inconveniences, and it might do us well to practice the art of accepting things that may annoy us or frustrate us, and learn to live with a new reality that might not have been one of our choice, but that most certainly is a new reality.  This acceptance will allow us to look at the change as something that simply is, and if we want to maintain our peace of mind and peace of heart, then the best thing that we can do is accept it and move on with the task of making ourselves the best we can be.  I imagine that many, many people have been upset at societal changes--women getting the vote, slaves being freed, civil rights being recognized, and on and on and on--but those people who have thrived have been those who understood that things aren't always going to go the ways they want, so it's time to accept things as they are and work within the new reality.  And personally, I hope always to be a person who thrives rather than one who holds on to resentment and refusal to change.

Finally Finishing--A Paragraph a Day

What a relief it is to finally finish a job that I've been working on a while.  After a leaking dishwasher ruined our floor, I've spent the last couple of weeks tearing out an old floor (which meant taking off the molding and door frames, of course), cleaning up the mold and glue, shopping for new flooring and underlayment, and actually putting in the floor and installing a new dishwasher.  It's been a lot of work, but what a great feeling it is to be able to say, "It's done."  If there's any sort of argument for perseverance that's super strong, it's the fact that the feeling we get when we finish something that's been difficult is a truly beautiful feeling, one of accomplishment and pride and all sort of other stuff mixed together.  When I rode my bike 400 miles in June, the feeling that I had when I rode into the town that was my final destination was incredible.  And the feeling happened only because I persevered and made it all the way--it couldn't have happened any other way.  I know quite a few people who almost never feel that way because they so often give up before they finish what they started, and I feel very bad for them.  There's a chance that they're building habits that will never allow them to actually finish something that's a long-term project, so there's a chance that they'll never experience the feeling of having persevered and accomplished something that they set their minds to.  Personally, I try to remind myself of the value of perseverance as much as I can because I definitely want to keep feeling that feeling.

So Much to Learn--A Paragraph a Day

One of the huge advantages that I find in our current technologically centered world is that some types of information that we spread with that technology can be very fascinating, indeed.  Pretty much anything I want to read is available to me somewhere, somehow, and we have many more people making films than we used to, of all sorts of cultures all around the world.  The improvements made to cameras and microphones make them easy to carry and to use, and this allows for people to film stuff that they never could film before.  I'm teaching a World Studies course in high school right now, and I've made it a video-based course (mostly because no other materials are available to me), and we're able to see videos filmed in some of the most remote regions of Asia, Africa, and South America.  We're able to see what people eat in Tanzania and Bolivia; we're able to go to school with kids in Burundi and Finland; we're able to see what winters are like in Siberia and summers in the Sahara.  I feel as though I've learned more through videos over the last few years than I ever could have previously, and I love that fact.  Of course, I don't want to be addicted to the screen and I make sure that I don't watch TOO much, but it's nice to be able to take advantage of some of this technology and learn as much as I can about my fellow human beings--people whom I'll never meet, but who have a lot to teach me.

Encouragement Is So Simple--A Paragraph a Day

I find it fascinating just how rare encouragement seems to be these days.  It's something that's so incredibly simple to give, yet relatively rare when we compare it to things like criticism and sarcasm.  So many people that I see in the world want to be critics or comedians, telling other people the flaws they see or deciding to make a joke about something rather than giving positive feedback that can give the other person strength and optimism.  I've seen far too many people, young and old, share an achievement with someone else only to hear something like, "Don't give up your day job," a response that's sure to discourage rather than encourage.  And even when someone follows up a response like that with "I'm just kidding," it doesn't really matter--the damage has been done.  First responses are incredibly important to us, and when we try to be funny or harsh rather than encouraging, we've lost a great opportunity to help out another person with words that are free and easy to say, choosing instead to focus on ourselves and our opinions.  Of course, encouragement must be sincere and we shouldn't lie to someone who has brought us something awful and tell them it's good, but we can still encourage the effort involved.  In my life, relatively few people actively encouraged me, and I know that those people who did live on in my heart as very dear people, indeed.

It's Going to Be a Beautiful Day--A Paragraph a Day

It's sometimes frustrating to see just how often I have to remind myself of the fact that every day can be beautiful, and that the quality of any given day is dependent more upon the attitude that I bring to it than to things that happen outside of my sphere of influence.  I'm going to school today, and I'm going to teach.  There will be stress, there will be annoyances and negative situations, but the positives of the situation far outweigh the negatives.  I get to work with young people who have their whole lives ahead of them, and I get to at least try to influence them in positive ways.  I often don't achieve this goal, but I often do--it's an up-and-down effort.  But I know that at least I have the chance to try, and on this particular day those chances stretch out before me in my very near future.  I may fail miserably today, but even in a day's failure there are things to learn that may make tomorrow better.  The chances are, though, that I'm not going to fail, and I get to say hello to some very nice young people.  I get to talk with some of them, and I have a chance to build them up by encouraging them and complimenting them (with only sincere compliments, of course!)  I get to eat some nice meals today (and some chocolate) and drink coffee and wine, I get to go running or bike riding, I get to feel the fresh air and listen to music and watch something on TV if I feel like it.  How this day turns out really is up to me, and I'm going to do my best to make sure that the day ahead of me turns out just as I've predicted in the title.

Getting out and Doing Something--A Paragraph a Day

Often when I get home after work, I feel tired and I want to do nothing but sit down and have a glass of wine or something.  I want to relax and recharge, and I don't want to do anything too active because I'm very tired.  Experience tells me, though, that that's exactly when I need to do something.  When I feel that way and I go for a run or a bike ride, or I start working on a project around the house, I feel more rejuvenated than I would have felt sitting down.  Using my body helps my body to kind of shift gears, to move into a different mode that actually feels very good to me, even though some minutes before I felt like any physical activity would have been too much.  It's nice to know this because now I'm able to tell myself, "No, I don't feel like going for a run, but I know from experience that it's going to feel good as soon as I start."  Far too often, we take the easy way out, and for me that would mean pouring the glass of wine and sitting down with a book or a computer.  But my body needs exercise just as much as it needs food, and my mind does much better when it's actively engaged in the world around me, so I'm glad that I'm able to overcome the feelings of tiredness and actually go out and exercise some.  Our bodies and minds can fool us and convince us to do things that aren't necessarily in the body's best interest, so it's good to be aware of their tendency to try to get us to take the easy way out rather than taking the most beneficial route.

Experience: A Wonderful Teacher--A paragraph a Day

I think we all wish we could erase some dark times in our lives.
But all of life's experiences, bad and good, make you who you are.
Erasing any of life's experiences would be a great mistake.   -Luis Miguel


It's fascinating how life works.  I had thought that things had settled down a bit, that I was going to be able to go for a certain amount of time without anything drastic happening, but then some members of my family decided to dash that thought to tiny little pieces.  And over the summer, a very negative and difficult time played out in my life.  But I made it through, and I did my best to keep reminding myself that no matter how difficult things got, other people have much more difficult problems to deal with, and I was being exposed to an opportunity to learn through trial, and it was a trial that definitely wasn't going to kill me or destroy any part of my life.  So I made it through and I learned a lot, all because I was pushed into a situation in which I ended up learning a lot about my family and myself, and which brought back a whole lot of childhood issues, many of which I'm afraid were never fully processed--so I have the chance now to process some of the things that could have been processed decades ago, had I had any support at the time that would have allowed me to do so.  I like Luis' words here--our experiences make us who we are.  We learn from them, or we don't.  I would add that our responses to those experience play a great role in how much or just what we learn, but this passage is just as good without my addition.  What are you going through right now?  What did you go through in July, or in the spring, or in the winter?  What did it teach you?  Did you learn those lessons and take them to heart?  It's important that you do so because life gives us ways to learn all the time, but it's up to us to learn from them or not, to see their value or to let them harm us.  I prefer to learn from my experiences, as the more I learn, the more I grow more fully into the person I'm meant to be.

What Do I "Deserve"?--A Paragraph a Day

There is too little idea of personal responsibility;
too much of "the world owes me a living,"
forgetting that if the world does owe you a living,
you must be your own collector.   -Theodore N. Vail

I start with the above quotation because it seems to me that this tendency is getting more and more predominant among people, especially here in the United States.  Our tendency to feel entitled to whatever it is we think we deserve is getting stronger, and unfortunately, we're getting more and more willing to harm other people in our quest to collect that which we think we deserve.  Our characters are being warped by our thoughts of what we deserve without doing any work to get it.  The truth of the matter is that we truly "deserve" very little as human being who just happened to be born into the society in which we were born.  I believe that because we're born into a society, we are entitled to the very basics of life, such as food and shelter and clothing on a basic level, but anything beyond that should be worked for, should be achieved--because that's what helps human beings to grow and develop and get stronger in life, the effort and work that it takes to make a great career, to buy just the right house, to reach a state of abundance rather than wallowing in a state of want.  The world has a whole lot to offer us, but many people see what it has to offer and simply say, "I should have that because I deserve it."  They don't keep in mind that other people have had to struggle harder than they have, that many have come into the world with far fewer privileges than they've enjoyed--and perhaps, those other people "deserve" those things even more.  But life isn't about looking around to try to find things that I deserve to have--rather, it's about coming to terms with those things that I truly desire, and then getting to work to accomplish what I need to accomplish to get them.

A Privilege--A Paragraph a Day

Sometimes my job gets stressful--if you've ever experienced teaching high school or read anything about it, you know that this is true.  Stress is part of this world.  But that's not the end of the story.  There with the stress and the hard times is an opportunity to spend a lot of time with a lot of young people, people who have yet to find their own ways in life but who are doing their best to do so.  I have the privilege of getting to know an awful lot of young people who are facing many, many obstacles, but who still keep on keeping on, who still try their best to accomplish what they want to accomplish.  I get to know them as a teacher gets to know them, and sometimes I'm even able to talk to them about things like what they want to get out of life, what they hope to accomplish with their lives, what kinds of hopes and dreams and aspirations they hold in their hearts.  And hopefully, in a very small way that most of them won't even remember, I'll be able to contribute to their abilities to make those dreams come true.  Perhaps I can teach them study skills or writing skills or communication skills; perhaps I won't teach them anything, but I can help to instill confidence in them, and help them to be able to pursue dreams and overcome obstacles.  My work is stressful, but it comes with an incredible privilege--to share a tiny bit of the lives of some of the young people who will still be here on this planet long after I take my leave.  And that's a privilege and responsibility that I hope to live up to.

Who Am I?--A Paragraph a Day

My identity is very important to me--or rather, my identities are very important to me.  I find it fascinating that I have so many of them, depending on the situation.  I have certain core ideals and beliefs and morals that exist across the identities, but the fact is that there's no way that I could ever make an argument that I have a single, consistent identity.  I value telling the truth, but there are situations in which I wouldn't feel that the truth is appropriate.  I'm not a violent person by any means, but I can imagine situations in which violence may be the best course of action,  I'm always going to do my best to maintain the behaviors that I know are helpful and kind and compassionate, but there are days when I'm turned inside and I miss opportunities to show those traits.  I'm pretty easy-going in class with my students, but when someone tries my patience (especially if they do so on purpose), I'm going to act in a different way with them.  I think that sometimes we get down on ourselves because we feel that we've somehow betrayed ourselves when a different trait surfaces, when we're not as kind to someone as we wish we had been, when we say something we wish we hadn't said, when we do something we wish we hadn't done.  While it may be appropriate sometimes to examine such actions firmly, it also is important to remember that the idea of "who we are" could be expanded to include "who we are in a given situation," while keeping in mind that the person we need to be in situation A may not be the person we need to be in situation B.  Life is full of changes and shifts, and a "foolish consistency" isn't going to serve anyone well, least of all ourselves.

Those Little Disasters--A Paragraph a Day

A few days ago, I was walking on our kitchen floor and heard a squishing sound.  That wasn't music to my ears.  It turned out that our dishwasher had been leaking water for some time, and our entire kitchen floor was ruined.  So I've spent the last few days tearing up a wet and moldy floor, scraping glue off a concrete floor, and disposing of a large number of pieces of flooring.  It's not what I wanted to be doing with the last five days, but it is what it is.  And I can't help but think of just how privileged I am to be able to have problems like this, and even to be able to fix them without worrying about what I'm going to eat next week if I spend money fixing it.  I'm also learning a lot about flooring and the floors underneath it and water damage and mold.  I'm getting practice taking off baseboards and putting them back on and fixing things up so that they look really nice.  I'm learning and growing in ways that two weeks ago I had no idea were in my very near future, and all because our dishwasher started leaking and ruined a floor.  I don't know if I can say that I'm actually enjoying the process of fixing the kitchen, but I'm certainly not hating it.

Walk away, of Confront?--A Paragraph a Day

So often we hear how important it is to stand up to anything wrong, to confront people who are doing wrong and tell them how wrong it is.  While I do believe that in certain situations this can be an important way of approaching things, I also know that confrontation isn't always effective and that it can lead to some very negative results.  Sometimes it's better to simply walk away from situations and people, and never go back.  Some people simply aren't willing to change, no matter what we say or do, and our confrontation will surely backfire on us, no matter how good our intentions.  Should I confront this woman for her racist speech, even if I know that my arguments are going to do nothing to change her perspective or her speech?  Because if I do challenge her perspective and beliefs, it's possible that she'll do what ever she can to get back at me, and suddenly my life is much more difficult--and she still has her racist perspective.  I've accomplished nothing in my attempt to get her to see how destructive her views are, and now I'm battling against someone.  How many women have spent years being abused because they keep trying to change their husbands' views and actions, when they could have left those men and started anew with their lives?  Sometimes, people are neither ready nor willing to change their ways, and we hurt ourselves when we spend tons of time beating our heads against brick walls in a futile attempt to change someone who doesn't want to be changed.

I Wasn't Enough--A Paragraph a Day

It interests me sometimes to ponder the past, to think about how I was years ago, decades ago.  In my memory, almost everything I remember is just like yesterday, but it's also a million years ago.  I think of how I was at age five, age twenty, age thirty--usually thrown back in time by a particular song that I hear, or a food that I eat, or a piece of news that I'm reminded of.  One of the commonalities of all the me's that I remember in my early life is that I was constantly cursed with the idea that I wasn't enough, that I didn't measure up to anyone's standards or needs.  I lost out on a lot because of this tendency, especially as far as relationships were concerned.  I thought that people didn't want to be around me, that they found me lacking, that they preferred to be with someone else.  And I believe that in many cases, my feeling became a self-fulfilling prophecy because I was constantly trying to be someone I wasn't, to make people like me, to force something positive to happen with someone else because I didn't trust it to happen without my help.  I no longer do this, and my life is much, much easier and much more pleasant now that I don't.  I'm fine just the way I am, and I no longer feel the need for anyone else's validation--I appreciate it when I get it, but my own happiness doesn't hang in the balance when it comes or it doesn't.  I am enough, just the way I am, and I'm completely willing to accept myself just as I am.  If someone else doesn't see it, that's okay--they're missing out on something they'll never know about, but I'm not going to put myself down or blame myself for their lack of acceptance or caring.  I like life much better this way.

Wind and Fences--A Paragraph a Day

We had a windstorm last night, and a pretty strong one--half of our fence is down out front, and we lost electricity for a couple of hours.  It still remains to be seen how much other damage was done.  It's not a disaster for us, though, as we still have a safe place to live and sleep, and we have food to eat.  It gets me thinking, though, about just how strong this planet is and just how quickly things in our lives can be changed significantly by something as fleeting as a storm that passes through in the matter of a couple of hours.  And isn't that how much of our lives are, too?  That person who's rude to us in the supermarket stays with us for a very long time in our minds, yet is out of our life pretty quickly.  That accident that we had changed everything, even though before it happened it seemed that things were going along quite normally.  Life does change, and our experiences of life change--that's just a rule of life.  While we can't live always dreading the unknown future or thinking about what might happen tomorrow, we do need to be able to deal with change, to accept the fact that the winds and the rains will hit us sometimes, and our main task after they do is to accept the fact that they were here and just go out and fix the fence.  Crying about the broken fence does nothing but add stress to our lives, but fixing it allows us to move on to the other things that are much more important.  So an hour from now, I'll go out and fix it.  It may end up costing more than I expect and it may be a bit more difficult than it looks, but at least I'll be accepting the fact that it needs fixing, and I'll be doing something about that fact.

New Trials--A Paragraph a Day

 I generally hope that things are going to go well in any given situation, but experience tells me that this won't always be the case.  Sometimes, things turn out pretty poorly, and when they do, it's up to us to make the most out of a poor situation, so to speak.  I'm in that situation now, for example--I was hired at the school I'm at to teach Spanish, an area of expertise in which I have a lot of experience and training, and in which I'm quite competent.  We also have very good resources available to us for teaching Spanish, so I have plenty of materials for class.  Unfortunately, though, it turns out that I'm teaching only one Spanish class and three other courses that I've never taught before, and for which I have no resources at all.  In other words, I'm preparing every class from scratch, trying to scrape together materials and make a semester work for the students.  This is an incredibly stressful and time-consuming situation, to say the least.  So what do I have to do?  I have to do the job, of course, or leave the school--which would leave a whole lot of students without a teacher.  And when I do the job, I have to try to keep focused on the positive when I can find it.  I have to try to remember always that what I do, I do for the students, not for the administrators who have put me into this awful situation.  I have to try to find ways to make myself look forward to going to school rather than dreading it, and to look forward to preparing classes rather than hating the process.  If I don't make this shift in perspective, I'm in for a miserable semester, and who wants that?  How things turn out over the next few months really is up to me, and I'm not the only one affected--my students, also, will know if I'm miserable or if I'm enjoying the work that I'm doing.  And they don't deserve to have me at my worst as a teacher.