Tag Archives: Personal

On My Mind

On Being You

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Heard:

Teenage girl screaming.

Seen:

Boy holding girl’s backpack over the railing protecting pedestrians from the East River. Boy has a backpack of his own.

Heard:

-Stop, stop it! Stop!
Crying.
-Say you’re sorry. Say you’re sorry!
Screaming.
-I’m sorry! I’M SORRY!

Seen:

Boy dangles backpack closer to the water.

Heard:

Screaming.
-I’M SORRY!!!

A conversation. Student begins:

-I think I’m going to make you a card at the end of the school year.
-Thank you, but that’s completely unnecessary.
-I know, but I think I will. Doing things to make people happy makes me happy!

Seen:

Man holding woman against a brick wall, yelling, hands waving.
Woman trying to move away.
Man blocking woman with his body.

Heard:

A slap.

A conversation. Young woman begins:

-Should we call the police?
-Shit, he grabbed her bag again.
-Call. We’re definitely calling.
-Calling.

A conversation. Student begins:

-How’s your day going?
-Oh it’s great, thanks, how’s yours?
-Mine’s good. I’m glad yours is good. As long as you’re smiling!

Seen:

Teenage boy and girl in a headlock. Both are spinning around, out of breath.
Passerby slows down, offers a long look.
Boy lets go of girl and girl responds in turn. Both laughing.
“She’s looking at us!”
Both run off, still laughing.

Some of these interactions are months old, burned into my memory like a muscle that grows stiff in the rain. Unwelcome. Uncomfortable. Troubling.

Others are newer, fresher, still turning over in my mind. Still trying to process what I’ve seen and heard, said or done.

“Doing things to make people happy makes me happy!” I smiled. I waved goodbye. Wished him a good afternoon. Realized my heart rate had gone up. Realized I was afraid.

Because such a sincere statement delivered with such obvious joy had brought me right back to the boy threatening to drop the girl’s backpack into the water, months earlier. I’m sure everything was in that backpack. Her schoolwork, her wallet, likely her phone. Would he have done it? In a moment of raging hormones, a crying girl, and feeling a surge of power . . . would he have done it?

And, just as pressing, how would the girl have responded? How did she respond to the threat once her bag was safely recovered? Did she walk away, never to speak to him again? Did she express her anger that he’d take advantage of her trust? Or did she let him back into her good graces because being with someone is better than no one?

The man yelling at the woman tell us that no, someone is not always better than no one.

The teenagers laughing as they play-wrestled tell us that affection can come in many forms.

But the fight between the man and woman tell us that affection, or what we perceive as affection, can sometimes be dangerous and even deadly.

Seeking first to make others happy sometimes comes at the expense of oneself and one’s own best interests. For this reason, I’m concerned about the student described above. He’s what we label “vulnerable”, which can have many meanings. He does fine academically but remains on the periphery of his grade’s social circles. He relates better to adults than to his peers, usually staying after class to chat, often walking down the hallway in conversation with an adult. He doesn’t seem to mind being alone and often spends recess indoors when everyone else is outside.

His comments remind me of myself in a lot of ways. Doing for others is a salient part of my identity, but I also know that it’s okay to say no. Over time, I’ve learned that sometimes putting others first can be detrimental to personal happiness and growth if engaging with others’ interests comes before acknowledging my own hopes, dreams, and desires. Coming to that realization has been a bumpy road and while a little bruising is okay, I’d like to spare my student (and anyone else) some of the scars that have resulted along the way.

Not too long ago, in a dark time of self-doubt and uncertainty, a friend reassured me that I was doing fine. “You do the best you that you’re capable of and if you make a mistake, you learn.” That message has played on loop in the back of my mind for months now. It has become a mental rallying cry, a checkpoint before making decisions, responding to others, or trying to challenge the status quo.

And that’s what I want that man and woman, those teenagers, and all of my students to know. That’s what I would have liked to say. Do the best you that you’re capable of and learn from your mistakes. Keep track of who you are and who you want to become. Everyone else can wait.

On My Mind

(Dis)connection

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I’ve been at a loss for words lately. I’ve been doing a lot of writing but abandoning drafts half formed, a lot of thinking but letting the thoughts go before uncovering them, playing with them, sharing them. I finished three (or was it four?) books this week, hoping their words would color the ideas I can’t seem to articulate.

A total sense of detachment from my own thoughts is strange. It’s like I’m watching myself try to figure out what I want to say and how I want to say it, staring out the windows of this café, half-noticing the people walking across the street. My own thoughts float lazily back to me, reminders that they’re there if I want to find them, introduce them to each other, engage with whatever is tugging at the back of my mind.

I’m an observer to my own mind. I’m lucid dreaming while awake.

On the surface, I’m preoccupied with a field trip, modified school schedules, papers to grade, end-of-year projects to implement. I can’t stop reading about healthcare and I can’t shake a deep sense of insecurity that I can’t quite place.

Oddly, however, discounting the healthcare travesty for the moment, it’s been a truly wonderful week. School was busy and productive and I laughed a lot. There was also a lot of socializing, which, while typical of my life in general, has not been typical of my life in New York. As usual when things happen, everything is happening all at once.

And that leaves me nostalgic.

I’m moving again over the summer (details on that after three more pieces of paper are finalized and signed) and that means starting over. When I know I’m about to say goodbye, I grow reluctant to do it. I grow more forgiving of the irritations and inconveniences I encounter, and begin to see them as endearing idiosyncrasies rather than sources of frustrations. I become aware of opportunities I haven’t taken, people I haven’t truly gotten to know, foods I haven’t tried, neighborhoods I haven’t explored, music I haven’t heard, sights I haven’t seen. As I make preparations to move for the fourth time in as many years, I begin to drag my feet, making mental (and sometimes physical) notes of what I’ll miss.

It’s never easy to leave.

And sometimes, it’s equally difficult to go.

I’ve learned that there’s a difference between leaving and going. The former means packing a life into boxes, hugging the people who have gone from being strangers to being friends, leaving the keys on the table, and waving goodbye. It’s a deliberate decision to stop turning back. It’s an exhale, a sigh, a conclusion. The latter is the first step forward, checking the time and setting the GPS, or handing over a passport to gate agents. It’s about deciding to take a chance, a gamble, a deep inhale. In going somewhere new, you’re supposed to be ready for anything. Otherwise, why go?

I didn’t do any of that when I moved to New York. I turned around in Singapore’s Changi Airport one more time after clearing passport control, and that was when I knew I was heading down a road leading to a very different future than the one I hadn’t admitted I was hoping for.

My mind has been spinning at night, which is apparent when I wake up before my alarm, when I look at my watch at the end of a run, when my dreams are fragments of conversations not had. I’m floating in between a life I might have had and a life I hope to have. Maybe you just weren’t ready, a friend suggested yesterday. I think she’s right.

What if I’m never ready? What if, now that I know what I’m looking for (including, not limited to, and largely involving authentic connection and collaboration with those around me) and what I want to do (change the world), none of it ever comes to fruition?

That’s the big step forward I mentioned earlier. It’s admitting what I’m looking for and want to do and committing to that. It’s dedicating my actions, relationships, and career to those things rather than trying to figure out what those things are. And it’s daunting because failure, readjustment, modification, and heartbreak are all likely along the road ahead.

But so are success, achievement, happiness, and love.

Because that’s what living means. As it has been. As it will be.

There’s no stopping in place because places don’t stop. There’s no turning back time because time can’t turn. There are no crystal balls, nothing foretold, foreknown, or predetermined. There are roads, as Dante and Frost said, and some roads are less traveled.

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On My Mind

What Scares Me

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My sixth graders have recently come up with a game. Before class begins, they hide just inside our classroom while I wait outside the door greeting each student as he or she walks in. While I’m doing this, the students inside the room jump out and yell, “Boo!” And then they laugh uproariously when I turn around slowly with my eyebrows raised, completely unfazed.

What my sixth graders don’t realize, among other things, is that part of teaching middle school means constantly being prepared for anything and taking it all in stride even when you aren’t.

The first time this happened, the kids asked in awe, “How are you not scared?”

I replied simply, “I’m not afraid of anything.”

They were stunned. One student spent two days listing off different events or activities that might scare me (i.e. a tarantula in my bedroom, climbing a mountain, skydiving) and consistently expressed surprise when I disagreed that each would be scary. While a tarantula in my bedroom might be uncomfortable and concerning and skydiving might be nerve-wracking and exhilarating, neither strike me as remotely scary.

“Things” don’t scare me. They never have.

Truth be told, however, I am more afraid now than I ever remember being.

Real Fears
With Donald Trump as the President-elect, there’s a lot to be afraid of.

And I am.

I am a woman, a naturalized US citizen (and I vividly remember the anxiety in our house when we applied for and received our Green Cards), and a religious minority. The vast majority Trump’s rhetoric and early policy proposals hit right where it hurts.

I have been inappropriately touched, spoken to, and spoken about on the subway. More than once. More than twice.

I have seen swastikas spraypainted on more than a few buildings.

My reproductive rights are at risk. As a result, so is my health. The affordability and accessibility of healthcare is uncertain.

My status as a person has plummeted and I no longer feel safe when I go running after dark.

I care deeply about the well-being of all people all over the world and of the health of the planet itself, so just about everything else Trump says is also cause for concern. My heart goes out to everyone who is a victim of the hatred caused by fear, which is a constantly increasing number. America promised to stand for the “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and I will. I purposely smile every time I see a women in a hijab and men holding hands on the street.

Stand strong. I stand with you.

I am afraid of the rhetoric that half this country has deemed acceptable.

In short, everything about the recent US presidential election scares me.

And I need to keep bringing it up because I refuse to sit by and wait for history to repeat itself. We know what happens when fear gets the better of us. We fought World War II already. An estimated 50 million to 80 million people died.

Personal Fears
These are irrelevant compared to the much more significant discussion above, but I’m going to include them anyway. If my fears about the political state of this country and the world are enough for you, stop reading here. (No hard feelings! Come back soon!)

Otherwise, here we go:

I’m afraid of being alone forever. I’m afraid of never being able to express my love for others with the depth, intensity, and care that I desperately want to. I’m afraid no one will love me enough to keep me.

I’m afraid of not making a difference in this world. I’m afraid of not making it better.

Looking Ahead
My sixth graders ask, “How are you not scared?”

I am.

Bu my sixth graders don’t need to know. They are already far more attuned to racism, sexism, violence, xenophobia, anti-immigration sentiment, anti-LGBT sentiment, discrimination, prejudice, and other issues than I was at their age. They live in a world dominated by fear, and this is where that fear has brought us.

Afraid? Very much so.

Giving up? Not on your life.

Now more than ever, I am committed to understanding the concerns of those around me. As I do so, I will continue working to build a world that is truly sustainable, better, and more peaceful for all who call it home.

Please join me.

Fear is the main source of superstition and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. – Bertrand Russell