Trying Desperately for the “Right” Perspective

I have heard many times, that perspective is everything. Focus on the positive, be grateful for what you do have, count your blessings, the grass isn’t always greener, see the glass as half full, blah, blah, blah. Easy to say when you don’t have to worry about how your bills are going to be paid, when you’ll get a break or when the day finally arrives when someone shows gratitude for you being on the planet. Easy for you to say when you don’t have piles of dishes and laundry, a lonely heart or angst over the next weeks professional and personal challenges. Easy for you to say when you lead the “charmed” life of TV shows and magazines. Yet, when you switch the lens, turn the compass, and zoom into a different latitude and longitude, you find someone else longing to be in your shoes and wishing your problems replaced theirs. Someone who longs to have a machine to wash the clothes they don’t own or even have a home to house the washer. While you look in envy at the cavernous, beautifully tiled and arched entryway of someone else, eyes are greenly looking to your unfinished floor and five bedrooms and would gladly trade the room in the home they share for your space, your family, your aging dogs.

So, what is the resolution to our tendency to compare and always put ourselves in the loser’s bracket? How do we quench thirst that only seems content with bashing someone else so you can have what they do? How do we train ourselves to quell the wandering eye and practice gratitude at home? How do we stop worrying about things that haven’t happened yet and how the resolution will be easier for someone with more money, prettier, thinner, who chose a better career or who married better? How do we focus on us, right now, being happy with our own cards, playing the game we were put in, knowing that there is truly enough happiness to go around?

The answer lies in “perspective.” It’s not a matter of refocusing the lens until you see someone in worse shape than you, but rather refocusing so you zoom in on your world and what’s right within it. Like the welcome you receive from your dogs when you return from a long day; like the new recipe you’ve attempted leaving you only a bite because your family devoured it and lay about with full, content bellies; like the crisp fall breeze on your skin serving in juxtaposition to the sun’s rays warming that same skin; like a refreshing drink of water after hiking a familiar, yet always beautiful trail. Perspective is seeing what’s good in your life at that moment for however long it lasts, until replaced by the next moment and more things to be grateful about. It’s the opposite of what we’re trained to do and because of that, the opposite of what is second nature.

My perspective and I are a work in progress on our way to a place where I can faithfully serve as Queen of my own castle once and for all to live happily ever after.

Lessons from 6th Grade Camp

Contentedly exhausted, covered in dust and sweat, trying to down a waterfall, hearing the silence of the night, I realize I’m in a different kind of heaven. One filled with woodpeckers, ants the size of beetles and changing autumn leaves. Crisp, dry air, squirrels, rabbits and wild turkeys.

A quiet evening after a day filled with the voices of excited children discovering and trying new parts of a world they never knew existed. Sliding down 15 foot dirt hills and laughing about the amount of it to travel home with us and holding a mountain lion pelt realizing your face and their paw are the same size.

A different kind of heaven where I see kids fighting back nerves and trying that new food, taking five more steps and leaping into the icy creek. And tonight, hiking by flashlight away from “civilization” to find a secret trail and recline on “Whale Rock” to see Venus, shooting stars and constellations.

A heaven I take for granted until my yearly pilgrimage to camp and my return to youth. Feeling the breath of the Kumeyaay, the welcoming of the blue jays and the chorus of crickets reminds me heaven is all around us. Taking chances, stepping away from comfort and getting dirty are what keep us young and let us truly see what life is about.

So get away, breathe deeply, be a kid, love the earth, and live. Thank you, Camp Cuyamaca, from my heart.

The Voice of Depression

It’s is killing me…

Literally.

Heart aching, wondering what I did that

I can’t 

Have the view of paradise,

The feeling of bills paid

With money left to enjoy

And breathe

And feel that all the hard work and sacrifice were worth it.

Abundant invitations, phone ringing, email full.

A plethora of friends helping through the far and few between rough patches

I thought there was enough good and happy

To go around.

Where’s mine?

What did I do wrong?

Will my children be cursed as well?

Why did I bring more into this world of hardship and hell.

Rule following gone wrong, again.

Why do I give until I bleed?

It’s like a drug giving an endorphin rush

A temporary high to replace the void

and hurt

and shame

and worry about what I’ve done to deserve to

struggle

wait

wonder if I can have a little of what

it seems like everyone has, but me.

What did I do wrong?

Where did I go wrong?

When is it going to end?

Because change is not

Making it’s face apparent.

If I could quit, I would.

Have faith, why?

That’s what got me here.

So give until I bleed, fine.

Maybe I’ll bleed out sooner and finally be done

Waiting for my turn,

Hoping things will change

Putting my best foot forward

Hanging on until tomorrow

Or even just until the next moment.

So back into the black hole

of emotional torture.

No one understands

No one can help

No one cares where it counts.

The mask goes back on.

“Each One Reach One, Each One Teach One" - A call to all teachers regarding "The Common Core"

Each One Teach One is an African-American Proverb that has taken a life of it’s own over the last few decades. The version I identify most with is, “Each one teach one, each one reach one.” As a teacher of kiddos with diverse backgrounds, life and learning styles working with a group of teachers with goals, ideologies and teaching styles just as diverse, I embrace this ideology head first as we march towards “The New” Common Core Standards.

While some on the far right side of the aisle have donned the Common Core to be the Death of American Education because open ended questions with a variety of right answers (read lifestyles, hairstyles and color-coding) and the end to one true and “right” way is truly the end, many of Common Core’s biggest cheerleaders say it will bring radical change to our educational system (as they believed for each of the previous changes). In truth, there are people like me, somewhere in the middle, who feel Common Core will bridge the gap between what we believe to be “good teaching” with what students are actually assessed on and expected to do in college and beyond. While some teachers wallow in a state of shock, others are open to potential change, while others, including myself, march forward with our own research, trials, observations and experiences with all that has been deemed, “Common Core.”

And here is where the proverb comes into play. As with anything in life, isn’t a challenge better faced together, rather than in our independent cubicles? Isn’t it better for those of us who are starting to “get it” work with those ranging from those who are open to those who are terrified? Shouldn't each one of us, teach one of us? Support one of us? Lead one of us? Human nature separates us into those who lead and follow with the best scenarios including a fluidity of those roles. As I spent 2+ hours of my Sunday morning reaching and teaching one new to the profession who is at a school filled with fear and infighting, I came to see the importance of each one of us reaching and touching each of us. Everyone must play a role in the adoption, execution and successful implementation of the Common Core. Let’s reach and teach...teachers! No fear, but faith in one another, in the process and in our students ability to rise, lead and learn. My hand is out...

Some of us are truly "Royal"

You know when you get a song in your head and a particular line replays like an old-school 78 skipping on the record player? Lorde’s sultry voice crooning, “And we’ll never be royals. It don’t run in our blood. That kind of luxe just ain’t for us.We crave a different kind of buzz,” has run a million times in my thoughts. It got me wondering why that line in particular was replaying. The concept of “Royals” has been a fantasy I’ve always welcomed. I knew my secret sense of inner superiority and intellect was because I had royal blood in my veins whether African, Egyptian, European or some insane, but not impossible combination of all three.

Standing in the middle of Walmart during my weekly grocery pilgrimage, belting “Royals” in my head, I realized the irony of the situation even though no one knew of this secret discovery but me.

Who and what I thought I would be was not to become what blends into the Walmart culture, but, I have found that I recognize workers I have been there so much. Each time I visit, I see hardworking employees on the hop, greeting me with a shared weary smile from one soul who’s trying to make it to another they recognize the same traits in. Though I don’t have tattoos on my neck or have to ride an automated wheelchair with the built-in basket, I have my own issues with peeling eczema, have lived paycheck to paycheck, dealt with unemployment, sick and dying family members, kids on my nerves and figuring out how I am going to “get by” one more week. I have been so exhausted I can barely put one foot in front of the other and have stood analyzing prices to ensure I won’t go over budget as the last few items move across the belt and are rung up at the register.

Oh, I’m no royal. Outwardly. But, like my fellow shoppers, I have a family I love, a job I need and am lucky enough to love, have aches and pains, uncertainty in my future and practice the art of creative cookery in the kitchen to stretch my budget.

And for that, we are royal. The “buzz” we “crave” is that feeling of knowing you made it when so many haven’t. That you made it when you shouldn’t have. So, even though, “Everybody's like: Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece, Jet planes, islands, tiger's on a gold leash. We don't care. We're aren't caught up in your love affair,” I do have a love affair. It is is one of feeding my family and living to tell about another day.

And for that, we are royal. I rock my invisible crown on the daily. I see those of you out there in yours as well, my fellow royals.

Lyrics courtesy of: LetsSingIt - Your favorite Music Community  http://artists.letssingit.com/lorde-lyrics-royals-w4wq4mg#ixzz2gzCFmjG4