There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.
You seek problems because you need their gifts. ~ Richard Bach
Two teachers arrived at school on a Monday morning. Each had contended the previous week with classes too large, changing schedules, interruptions, a demanding principal, and the burden of the paperwork of description, compliance and accountability. Compounding the expectations was the press of challenges the children brought with them to school. It was an old tape: too many kids, too little time, too many problems, and too few resources.
Ms. Grumper groused that it certainly would be another week of problems complete with fussing, fuming and frustration. “School isn’t what it used to be,” she railed. “I don’t know how I can get done everything they expect me to do.” So what’s new? Teachers never do. “The kids today don’t act like kids used to act,” meaning they aren’t as polite and respectful to her and she doesn’t like them. I don’t wonder why. Her glass was half empty, drained by her past.
Ms. Joy asked herself, “What will my children need this week? What can I do to reach them?” She saw problems as challenges to be surpassed in creating an environment in which her charges would thrive. “How can I shield them from the demands and constraints and help them learn?” “Which ones will need my healing touch today so they just can have a chance to learn?” Her glass was full of the present.
The two worked in the same school with the same problems. Each made a choice about how to start her day. One donned the mantle of teacher and became a teacher; one did not. She chose to remain a cynic. That it was Ms. Joy who decided to star in her role as teacher is evident. Equally evident is the likely outcome of each of their days.
We are not all teachers; we are not even all actively engaged in the workplace, but each of us has a role to play in the drama of life. Each of us has the same choice to make about our day. Our choices are influenced by the roles we play. Most of us have multiple roles that are at times in conflict: worker-spouse-parent, student-athlete-child, volunteer, coach, sponsor, participant, caregiver, or patient. We also take on roles arising from our experiences: strife, success, failure, leader, victim, widow, doer, listener. Conflicting roles can challenge us in the choices we make.
Each day we arise to the newness of the opportunities before us. The joys and challenges of the previous day are written in our life-book and are not to be rewritten. We may edit them in our memories, but they remain unchanged. We can create illusions of new editions to cloud our regret, guilt, or pain; but we cannot press life’s delete key and erase our memory.
Like it or not, rewritten or not, we carry into the day our memories of who we are, who we have been and how we have been. We carry into each day the multiple roles we play and the conflicts and emotions they bring. How we respond to that is the challenge. What is new each day is who we can be and how we can be. What is renewed is our opportunity to be a star.
We are the stars of our own life. Each day is another opportunity to accept our yesterdays as nothing but practice, and to star in in today’s performance.
The day may be set with problems; that is a normal course of events. Whether we view problems as problems or as challenges, we need them because it is through them that we have the opportunity to learn and to grow as humans. Otherwise, the days remain humdrum, and we remain stagnant in our complacency. Life does not become boring, but people can.
Greet the day as the new opportunity to learn and grow that it is. Don the mantle of your role; and be in the moments of your day. Be alive. Be a star. For this day quickly will end and be relegated only to your memory.
* Bach, R. (1977). Illusions: the adventures of a reluctant messiah. New York: Delacorte Press.
* Bach, R. (1977). Illusions: the adventures of a reluctant messiah. New York: Delacorte Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment