Lest we Forget

I once heard that after you give birth, there is an endorphins released in your body to help you forget the pain so you will do it again. I have come to realize that the same type of endorphins is release into the body during the month of May for teachers. It helps them forget the trauma of teaching, but then the first day of school hits and every teacher wonders, why did sign up for another year?

The Choice to be Happy

Perhaps it's not a novel concept, but we are the ones who choose to be happy or miserable. We often equate our happiness with the situations around us. The more we choose to be happier the better our lives will be.
This week I started back to the grind of getting ready to teach. While it's exciting to come back, see the teachers and students again, and exciting to create new ways of doing things, it's also really frustrating. There are a million things to get in place and little time to do them all. There are new reading programs that only have half arrived. There are people who refuse to say one way or another about our budget so we don't know who we can hire. There are changes in schedules so one's plans are all negated, and there are new little surprises that are placed on the teachers shoulders that feel like set backs (this year we all got to clean our own rooms because the janitor had quit). To put it mildly, the stress level for everyone is way over the top.
This week (and the rest of the year) will be stressful. It always has been and it always will be. No doubt there will be some nights of crying on my part because if there weren't it wouldn't truly be teaching. It's hard. It frustrating, and so many things we know we are suppose to do contradict what we feel like what we need to do. We always want to do more, but we also need to have a personal life. We always wonder if we have pushed a kid far enough academically. We always wonder if had taught it another way if we could have made a little more of a difference. I work with some amazing teachers, and they all at some point wonder if they couldn't do just a little more.
With all this stress I've seen two types of reactions. There is the most common reaction which is to give into the negativity and there is the reaction that leads to it's not fair, it's hard, but we'll do our best. The fact is you can get frustrated, but it doesn't have to ruin your day. You can find happiness that is not dependent on your job. In fact, if you are truly happy and not just feeling a momentary pleasure, your happiness does not come at all from your job, spouse, money, house, car, etc. Your happiness is within you. It's the light that shines from the soul. It's the inner peace that everyone seeks for. It doesn't matter if someone shoots you down, or disrespects you. If you seek for that light within you, the world does not influence your happiness.
In his book, "Man's Search for Meaning," Viktor E. Frankl says that even during the holocaust he saw this principle. When everything had been taken away from these people, some would choose to let this light shine. There were some who on their deathbed would give whatever little scrap of food they had to someone else. Those people let their light shine. They had the inner happiness and peace. The happiness wasn't reliant on the place or the situation they were in. It was based on who they were inside.
Let's try not to mask our light. Don't let the disparity of the situation get us to forget the happiness inside. Constantly choose to let your light shine.

The Myth of Happily Ever After

Some where in our youth, we are taught that life will end happily ever after. We create in our minds the perfect plan to our lives, and we fully expect that those things will happen. Of course, we admit that "bad things can happen," but we never truly feel that those bad things will happen to us.

Then, somewhere between our blissful happy youth and our adulthood, we discover that life isn't a fairy tale at all. At times it can be hard, miserable, lonely, mundane, or disappointing. The determination to change the world through our job, turns out to be a hoax. The people we love tell us they don't love us anymore, and the plans have so intently come to rely on crumble before us. Our lives are shaken, and we feel lost. What has happened to the blissful happiness of youth?

But, when our lives crumble and fall completely apart there comes a change into our lives. Our souls are so deeply shaken that they have to start over again. The mind has to reconstruct reality, and through this life is enriched.

Life may not turn out the way we expect, but it will turn out better. Not that the next job will be significantly better, the next person we love won't end up hurting us as much, or the plans we make next won't crumble, but our lives will be more enriched and ready for the next step.