Revisiting recent events...
What you resist, persists
When you persist, without inner resistance
You discover your personal power
A half-full-cup attitude, would describe the timetrial in PE as ‘humbling’; a half-empty approach would label it ‘humiliating’. Both descriptions have nothing to do with a real or imagined audience. They have to do with me, and my personal standards. The answer is not to berate oneself for one's failures, but to set about to correct them, to get to work, to get active in terms of getting back on top. Bearing this in mind, you can’t, as Henry Ford said, build a reputation on what are going to do. You can only build on what are doing, and what you have done.
The result of this hard landing was an unexpected bout of self doubt – about everything. I am a bit of a sore loser. That’s a good thing, because it means one is ambitious, passionate about winning. But it also means losing hurts, even it is losing to the strongest ghost that lives in oneself.
For some reason I was under the impression that Fransa’s birthday was the 6th of June, making her a Gemini instead of a Cancerian. I know this sounds flaky and shaky, but I had a deep inward turn, where I thought, well, if she is a Gemini I can’t believe our relationship will last. All Gemini’s I know have hurt me a lot, and are just not reliable, or trustworthy – maybe not as people, but certainly, towards me. It made me realize just how much faith I place in starsigns. It also made me wonder, because she fits a cancerian to a T, that I believe so strongly what I want to believe, that I completely distort reality.
I think that is true to an extent, but as it turns out, Fransa’s birthday is in July, on the 6th, so she is a cancerian. As I say, I realize faith in horoscopes sounds flaky, but it’s fair to say that all my relationships have worked (for better or worse) according to them, and I mean this even retrospectively, before I even paid attention to it.
In terms of resistance, I was unwilling to let cheating students lie, so took the tests that I gave 0 to the headmaster, and realized just how mentally and physically tired I was when I stood there and just felt how low my energy levels were as I had to listen and make sensible replies. In the end, he quoted Mao, which calmed me down, and suggested that controlling the school is like controlling China – a huge and complex task: sometimes you have to take a few steps back, in order to advance.
I’ve also been using these metaphors to characterize my job/experience at the school:
- hell
- chaos
- madness
I’ve tried to disentangle these negative in favor of seeing shouting students and mayhem as walking money. Seeing the time ‘wasted’ as an ongoing investment in my PGCE degree, time I won’t have to resubmit myself to if I can get through it now.
Saw a kid playing with a Playstation plasma screen about the side of your palmx2. Amazing graphics. Want to get me one of those...
Today Mrs Martins wanted a meeting with me during break, and before our meeting I made a list of counterarguments, complaints, points, rebuttals etc. I expected to be attacked for not being able to control my class or for not doing my job perfectly. Instead, she just told me to change the exam paper I set up – adding questions on the first terms work. I felt relieved, but also pointed a finger at myself saying, inwardly: stop being so paranoid and hard on yourself.
Earlier today, as we were checking whether the kids had bus cards (all the staff), I spoke to one of the staff members, an attractive, married, short haired teacher with a matching green jersey and flat6 leather shoes. After complaining about the lack of co-operation she made a very articulate case for why our jobs don’t feel meaningful, and why we are so frustrated. She said that if a student was a brick, and it was brought to school every day (doing nothing, saying nothing, basically being a burden), the school would find a way to pass it. Because ‘they are not allowed to fail’. Things have changed from our time.
But it was a relief to find that I am not the only one that feels so frustrated. I’m not alone, and I spoke to another red haired teacher, and we agreed, that you have to have a sense of humor, and be a bit dreamy as you go through each day. If you’re pedantic about everything, they’ll break you.
It was one of my students’ birthday today – Amanda. I bought her a few toffees and wrote on a piece of paper: Have a lovely day. You should have seen her smile. Small gestures can mean a lot.
Small acts of persistence can bring us back into the heart of our personal power.
This afternoon I felt swallowed in a whirlpool of fatigue. Still adjusting to the change in sea level, I think, and I can feel my body is fighting off the flu. Nose is slightly runny, head is slightly thick and sore. Body is sore, but I think from gym. So I slept. Felt like I died. Just completely gone.
Struggled to come out of it. Felt stuck. Oozy woozy. 5pm was coming closer and then I just decided: stuff supper. It’s usually not worth the wait anyway. So got dressed and went out. Really chilly, but felt good. Jumped up Naval Hill and saw Bertus (the guy I beat by a whisker in Fauresmith) on the top. Floated around the top, spotted a giraffe and the moon drifting behind the mighty red and white tower and its cables, meanwhile the nuclear yellow cigarette sun was just sinking away.
Caught Bertus on the way down and invited him to go up another steepy – Harrismith. Said he’d done it 6 times, and then at the bottom of Naval Hill, said what the heck.
Dropped him with quite abig gap, but then I was quite a bit fresher. Heart rate way into the 170’s. Cycled to the Waverley circle and got his number (he said he came 4th in his age group (35-39) and 11th overall).
Then did Lucas Steyn and Basil Read. Basil Read pushed me hard. Cycled 22km in all, but came back feeling like Neo, just after he’d jumped into Agent Smith and shattered him from the inside out. Stretching into my skin. The world bouncing in and out as the new power (and energy) dispensation set itself into the new reality.
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