With a Conscience - "What I know...Now"

 

     The older you become, the more death becomes a closer and closer reality.  I am sorry for being so morose but this is a fact.  Each year is a blessing.  Each year should produce more gratitude. This past year, I have attended the wakes of many lost lives and the one take away from each of them is that these individuals lived incredibly full lives.  Age had absolutely nothing to do with their death.  It had everything to do with how they conducted their life while living.

     You can not be sixty years old and not reflect on the choices you have made and the work you have done.  It has always been about choice.  When you go to bed each night, and you think about the day, think about what really happened.  Think about how you have treated yourself and others.  I have known so many who have faced cancer, and other debilitating health issues and they survive.  They survive because they have purpose.  They love. Boy do they love!  They face their issues with faith and with a strength that leaves me in awe.  Purpose gives us strength.  Purpose gives us a will to live.  When you have loved, you have reached a goal that many run from and many avoid. To love, means you have become beyond brave. This is our purpose as human beings. 

     Death brings peace.  I have yet to see that not be the case.  BUT, it is the faces of those who have loved, still living, that have to face that loss and find a way to face and cherish their memories of those they have lost.  This is often not an easy task. There is guilt.  There is a feeling of helplessness.  There is an emptiness that for most will always be felt no matter how much time is passed.  This goes for anyone and anything (pets too)  that has meant anything to us.  Grief is real.  Grief is the wakeup call that makes us realize we will not live forever so we had better follow our dreams and get busy.

     You can not be 60 years old and not wonder how much time is left but what I need to add to that thought is, we can also ask ourselves, "What's next? What else do I want to do before I am unable?" The answer to that is we need to follow our hearts.  We need to feel that fear and do "it' anyway. Fear stops us from doing so many things.  I dare say, that will not be me.  I hope it will NOT be any of you.  

"School Daze" - For My Teacher Friends

 ‘A good teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.’ 

–Thomas Carruthers

     For teachers, the month of September is a lot like facing the holidays for some.  Actually, there are two types of teachers...Those who look forward to the school year and those who do not. Anxiety breeds all kinds of behavior that we may not have seen or experienced in those we know.  Like the holidays, there are those who look forward to them and those who dread them.  All of the reasoning is sound and this is the truth.

     What all teachers have learned within the past year and a half is that nothing is definite and alhtough planning is an altruistic endeavor it has proven to be not unrealistic during a pandemic.  Teachers are the last to know as most of the public has been.  There is just no planning during a pandemic.  The question is, "Should there be?"  

     There has not been one teacher that I have spoken to who has not expressed their anxiety and their worry about their students and everyone else in their immediate circle.  Where has the lack of regard for human well-being gone? It boggles my brain to think that so many Americans are ignoring what would logically appear to be reasonable and sensible. We have already sacrificed so much, and lost so much. This includes our time.  Time with our loved ones; time with our colleagues; time with our friends...You can not get time back.  Time is not refundable.  When you are fearful, time is irrelevant.  Fear makes us unaware and it takes aware what is rational.

     No doubt, many of our kids will return to school operating at a deficit and their anxiety and their excitement will be prevalent.  We will take it slow and we will take it one day at a time.  It will be more important to be consistent if not patient.  We need to be kind and patient with each other too.  We will be covering for each other.  We will be yet again, stepping up and doing what we are required to do.  We need to forgive the inconvenience and embrace our good fortune that we are healthy and we are vital and we are who we are.

     If I have learned anything over this past year and a half is that love matters.  If I have learned anything at all

it is that the pandemic brought out the true colors of those around me and society in general.  September is coming.  Our plans, such as they can be, are in place and the commaderie of those who understand, is sealed.  Wear the mask.  Love....

     

With a Conscience - "A heavy dose of reality"

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."  - John F. Kennedy

After a long, and I mean looooooooooooooooong day of teaching, I stopped at the grocery store to buy a couple of things for "the husband" and I.  As I was entering the store, a middle-aged gentleman was hovering over a over-flowing shopping cart of a very elderly woman, probably in her 80's.  "I'm sorry," he told her.  "We have to take back more than half of these items.  You can't afford all of this."  The older woman stood there blankly staring at the cart.  My heart, and I'm sure his heart, was breaking into bits of remorse and fear.

We age.  We all age.  When I was 13 or 14, I wanted to be 20.  When I was 20 or 21, I wanted to be 40.  When I reached 40, I felt like the entire world was opening up to me.  When I reached 50, I realized that I had just begun my life.  Every decade, I am re-inventing the possibilities of my future.  Today, I had one question.  "Could that ever be me?  Could I end up like this woman?"  I drove home in a complete and utter fog.

I had a second reaction by the time I reached home.  "Anyone of us can end up in the situation this elderly woman was in at the store.  Perhaps she had Alzheimer's and was trusted to buy what she needed and her care-taker's trust was overly invested.  Perhaps, though, she really needed the groceries in her cart and simply couldn't afford it.  That realization devastated me. I was then ashamed because I was focusing on my own feelings and not hers and certainly not on her relative, caretaker who started taking the groceries back to the store.

It's a sad, sad state of affairs when older people are shamed into returning basic necessities because they can't afford them.  This is a harsh, harsh reality.  I realized today, that there is so much I need to be doing before, before, my energy and my passion leave me.  What is happening to the elderly of our society is not kind.  No elderly person should have to make a choice over the types of groceries they can keep or not keep.  

It is the very young and the very old that seem to be the least respected, cared for and vulnerable in our modern society.  We don't make time for either.  This is the cost of modernism.  This is the cost of putting "things" over "beings."  Our young, our elderly, give us the balance and the ability to love.  It's frustrating at times.  It hurts sometimes.  However, if we don't start putting human life ahead of our own materialistic needs, we are bound to longer, harsher winters than the present one.

As I was driving away, the elderly woman was still outside, looking at her cart.  Her caretaker no where to be found.  I suppose he was busy returning items.  I was busy wondering why I hadn't realized until now that life changes on a dime.  The new year is almost upon us and I'm now thinking that I still have a long, long ways to go in developing my understanding of the human condition.  Being 50 doesn't mean I have all the answers.   Unfortunate situations can happen to any of us at any age and it's how we look out for each other that make and keep our souls healthy.  How willing are any of us to step out of our own "self-absorbed," self-effacing" behaviors to remember that when we have more than enough, we need to advocate for those who don't.