Trouble in Paradise

The dichotomy of my days has been growing. On one side are perfected times with family and friends and on the other a troubling time on certain days with passive resistance and lack luster interaction with my students. There has also been the recent car accident, which has reopened old wounds both physical and psychological. There is that run-away train feeling.

A recent trend to increase classroom size, with classes expanding to upwards to 35, and the dumbing down needed as more troubled and lower teared students enter the pool with current demographics shifts... less students born into the school system means more of the bottom placed in previously unattainable schools... But all of this reads like rationale. My job is whatever is placed before me, as well as the emotional adjustment needed to deal with the challenges of both the classroom and administrative challenges of my employment.

The 'run-away train feeling' is a life time of teaching and living catching up with me. Those tail-ends of unresolved emotions, heated up by the layering of new feelings. In affect, my trying to please everyone and not succeeding.

I have made several adjustments, each day to the various needs of my students, in the diverse classroom settings I currently teach. Some of it has been quite successful while other attempts are lost in the numbers. At core, though, is my awareness of my inevitable responsibility to my life situation, i.e. I am in charge; parallel to much is also outside my control, i.e. I am not in charge.

This duplicity, with my will to master my situation on one side, and this observation that so much is outside my ability to control, has me grasping at straws.

An emotional centering is advisable now. I can feel my mind trailing off in distinct directions: relationships, work related, needed transitions for the future, distracting yet essential pleasures, the trials and tribulations of driving, parenting, maintaining this richly diverse lifestyle...

Time to psychologically regroup and set my priorities in order. But there is so very much on my plate and much of it so very delicious. Perhaps the best perspective is slowing down into this moment and managing the particular place I am... Look deeply at this feeling of insecurity and dissatisfaction while tasting the sweetness of all my many many blessings.