But, to fill you in: I have been extremely of late. My excuse, actually, is rather lame: work. A younger version of myself would cringe to think that I would be so consumed with a job. I've been working nights, weekends, and odd hours. I sit in Los Angeles traffic for about two hours each day. I get five hours of sleep each night. I drink more coffee than water. I'm too busy to even trim my split ends. My entire person has all but been consumed in striving to succeed in my career. But, in my defense, I don't slave away in a cramped cubicle all day. No. I march each day toward a complicated battlefield where I daily battle the demons of ignorance and ambivalence. I am a High School English teacher.
This has been a dream of mine for years, and I am actually quite happy to be fulfilling it. Sure, there are days in which I find myself an inch away from literally thrusting my head against a wall. However, there are also a few days when my heart glimmers with pride when I see young minds suspended in radiant wonder at the sheer power of ideas. Those are the days that make my job worthwhile. I love to see students learning to think for themselves. I love to see students learning to make meaning out of the chaos around them. And I love to see students building the confidence to live their lives deliberately.
Despite all of this, however, I am tired. In some ways, I feel like I've lost some sense of direction when it comes to my own life. You see, one thing I've learned from being a teacher is that there are so many bad parents out there. Usually, I'm not one to judge - especially considering that I've yet to experience parenthood. However, I see kids that are broken every day. There are kids whose parents aren't adequately preparing them for life, kids whose parents don't know how to show them love, and kids whose parents have shattered every shadow of self-confidence those kids ever dared to possess. My own heart shatters for those poor kids, and I stay up every night trying to find ways to help prepare them for life as best as I can. It's a noble pursuit, for sure. But, it has left me very tired emotionally, physically, and spiritually. The worst part of it comes with the realization that I cannot even begin to affect all of my students in the ways that I want to.
Don't get me wrong, these kids are certainly worth fighting for. But I need to take care of myself too. You see, I've been literally pouring all of my energy into this job. As a result, I've stopped writing, I've stopped painting, I've stopped dreaming. Thus, I've been losing a little part of myself. I've mentioned this in previous blogs, but I had a very strong sense of direction when I was in high school myself. What I realized when I was in my students' position was that life is short and I knew that the one thing I was to never do was to stop fighting to live the life I wanted. I remember the day I first read works by Henry David Thoreau as a junior. He said, "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined." I told myself that I would live by this. I even introduced my own juniors to Thoreau. But, what if I am becoming a sham? Am I truly still living by this?
Ever since I was in high school, I had this unwavering idea that the life I'd imagined was a simple life in Romania. I imagined a quaint, little house surrounded by nature. I dreamed of discovering who I would have been if I hadn't left Romania. And, frankly, after all of these years, this curiosity still flickers in the depths of my soul. Actually, that flicker has been burning brighter and brighter to the point that I'm actually looking for ways to make this a reality. And, as time passes and I grow older, I'm realizing that this won't happen unless I actually do something about it. I heard myself speaking to my aunt one day. I was telling her of my desire to be in Romania and I realized that this was the 100th time I had discussed this with her (as I do with most of my family). It dawned on me that I was probably starting to sound like a broken record as I always talked about my desire to be there while I was discontented with my life here. I'm all talk with no action. I always tell people that things don't just happen, but that we make them happen. And yet, look at me. I dream. I imagine living the rest of my days here and I feel suffocated, but what am I doing to change this?
So what if I did just go confidently in the direction of my dreams? What if I just left? As the people around me age and grow frail, I can't help but realize that life is short and tomorrow isn't guaranteed. The longer I stand in one place, the more I lose my courage to move. Why am I so afraid? Especially when the old me was the one to chase adventures? 11th grade me would be yelling at me to lift the anchor and spread the sails. But I do know why I am afraid. All of my life I was Miss Goody Two-Shoes. I always fantasized about being an adventure-seeker, but, in reality, I was always planning for the future and taking calculated risks. And, at this crossroad of my life, I am afraid of setting myself back. I am afraid of failure and misdirection. I've never significantly failed at anything and I worry about messing up my future. Someone (okay, fine, a therapist I saw once) asked me what I had to lose. I proceeded to enumerate a lengthy list of things: financial security, career path, the ability to purchase a home, etc. She reminded me that people fail all the time, and she reminded me that I was an educated woman who would always be able to find some sort of job to pick myself up. Which, in theory, is true. But, in many ways, I am a coward (which isn't a word I like to believe describes me).
So, what am I going to do? I can spend more days talking to my aunt about how I wish to build a quaint, little house somewhere surrounded by nature. I could continue to dread traffic and imagine myself somewhere else while my life slips away on the freeway. I could continue to spend my hours working for a paycheck. Is this what will make me happy? Will I look back on my life someday and consider this the best version of my life? I honestly think that I would live to regret no knowing what might have been. Thus, I have decided. Next summer, I'm going to finally purchase that one-way ticket. It will be terrifying to not know what the future has in store, but isn't that what makes life exciting? I will consciously choose to go confidently in the direction of my dreams. And I will live the life I have always imagined.
No comments:
Post a Comment