Sometimes your years are in harmony. Sometimes, harmony is far reached- a rarity.
For those whose environment have been put to a test, it is the great times, those peaceful and joyful times, that make all of a sudden, difficult moments hard to (want) to bare.
The air we breathe doesn’t always cling well to our clothes, so to speak. The sounds we listen to aren’t always the tune we want to hear.
And, yet, as much as we would hope or like, not everything is within our power of control.
As Olive in Popeye would say it, “Oh, Phooey!”
When the air you breathe is strong and heavy, it doesn’t just creep to your skin, but sticks to you.
We perhaps have all experienced, where after having left a room or place, others around can be given some scent or sense of where one has been.
I can stand next to a student and smell the wet clothes having slowly dried, a mildew stench. I wonder to myself how similar our lives connect, actually only realizing at moments such as these, now, that perhaps my clothes gave off the same stench without me knowing.
I recall one school day in high school, having wreaked like cat litter. I had worn my favorite (the only one I paid my after-school work hours for) sweatshirt from Mock Trial that day, rushing off in the morning to make it in time for first period.
I recall having wondered what the smell around me was all about by that first period.
I was wearing the smell.
The cat Papa and I harbored into our home had no cat litter as having grown up in the countryside of the Philippines, we naturally saw cats use dirt outside.
The cat we took in may have not been the most brilliant. On the other hand, perhaps my sweatshirt just had a warmer appeal as temperatures cooled down outdoors.
I recall my classmate, Bret, looking my way, avoiding my gaze as I laid my usually tired head down on my desk, as I thought to myself, “It could be worse.”
I ignored the next rebutting voice within me trailing after.
When the child is strong in their stance, anything after a greeting and quick verbal check that all are well, need not be spoken, serving only as unneeded discourse beyond their resistance to acknowledge anything to be of concern.
Hardships lived by the strong and focused to no longer be a part of any of its unasked circumstances get let go as one moves forward.
Pollution, being unhealthy, is unwelcome. We simply strive to gain better air to breathe.
Good, clean air is a luxury. I vouch for this understanding.
Bad air doesn’t have to wreak from your clothes. One’s air can easily carry heaviness from the heart, mind, body, and spirit.
It is with great luxury to have control as to what type of air to fill your surroundings with at all times.
The challenge, under an umbrella of all venturing and seeking different kinds of journeys and experiences to arrive at inevitably awaiting sculpted masterpieces before hardening, is that not all align with the same air carried or desired.
We walk into a room, each feeling some kind of way.
There’s a reason why emojis continue to expand in various characters. If you are like me, who, to this day, have still run across a time where an emoji character you were feeling inside still couldn’t be found amongst the plethora already offered, our gradients and layers of emotions are just that, abysmal.
Our power of control to be found under the surroundings we are in, when depleted, must not be held captive.
We still have power of control within.
Like parenting, teaching presents a mixture of air given for you to manage all at once.
The air you breathe isn’t always yours to own, but must momentarily be shared or endured.
With either parenting or teaching, one cannot just step out and leave those depending on you and your care.
Like my own children, I have remarkable students who walk in with the desire to take part in the engagement of learning.
With various, unique levels of air to offer, depending on what kind of day each have already had, greatness next to defeat can be felt if not seen.
For instance, let one come in with tumultuous storms or ominous clouds of air, when trapped in, all quietly hold their breath or gasp for any clean air amidst the thick ones taking over.
Breathe. Relax. Let go. I can only imagine my classmate of four years, Bret, repeating this practice as he continued to sit next to me in that first period class. (I reluctantly took off the sweatshirt so he and others wouldn’t have to endure the unpleasantry the rest of the day.)
I have said, “I have yet to give up on a child”, but laughingly add to suggest that every year, “there are those who always want to take on the challenge of being the first.”
If air were music, we all know that not all around want to listen to the same tune.
The air is sound and peaceful when all are in agreement with the same music being played. It’s like a symphony- some pick up their instrument for all others to listen, while the rest can just sit back. There is harmony to enjoy nonetheless.
The best symphony, alas, is the one with great synchrony.
Whether a parent or teacher, my truest enjoyment is to become like the conductor that no one is paying attention to any longer. All already know their part and I’m just there to supervise the room to make certain all are in tune.
It is the parent who no longer has to parent; the teacher who no longer has to teach.
Just when you think playing the same song or playlist on repeat works for all (as my husband’s character portrays itself), there are those who eventually will try as they may to change the tune (as lo’ and behold, I do).
There comes that moment where your piece of air is no longer someone else’s peace to share.
The stench of discomfort begins to wreak from the heart, mind, body, and spirit of the troubled.
My husband and I have always had this agreement that when we are in the car together, with or without our children, the driver gets to choose the music to play.
The deal with that is, like a man to open a woman’s door, my husband has always naturally taken the driver’s seat when we drive together.
Respectfully, I selectively rebel.
When both of our soul for music match, I can be at peace to sit in the passenger’s seat and listen to whatever he is listening to as we catch up with whatever comes to mind to talk about.
All is well when we are in sync.
As priceless are both, under the same ranking as partnership in marriage, when the number of children grow in parenting or teaching, so do selectivity and options.
Think parent. Think teacher.
Who is breathing whose air?
Who is listening to whose music?
Having taught for so many years, having raised three children through their adolescence with currently two more, such training has toughened my skin up a bit.
While learning comes with a high price of at a minimum, a slight pinch, when unexpected words are spoken, nowadays, I am grateful that my pride just kind of steps aside while my heart, mind, body, and spirit all focus on the goal to hit a mark for success.
Having had great journeys and experiences in teaching all main subjects, next to scientific experimentations (I could be that student all day), math requires most order and discipline, either when sitting down together, working to problem solve, standing up in groups to collaborate, or individually monitoring one’s independent progress.
Understandably math being not everyone’s favorite subject, levels of desire to listen, engage, and to add, learn, must be accepted whole-heartedly.
While I’ve yet to be unaffected as a parent, loving my own children at fullest, and so, being most vulnerable, I have to understand that while I’m feeling some kind of way, so are each individual person before and around me.
There has to be a give sometimes for all to achieve a goal together.
So, when a student tells me, “It’s not you, I just don’t want to be here,” I recall hearing my soul blurt out in response, “I know it. Me, too.” Her rebuttal laughingly exclaimed, “I wasn’t expecting that!”
We all want to be somewhere else but where we find ourselves at times. It is not those you find yourself with that at times make you feel that way.
As you know, I haven’t completed vlogs for quite some time.
While I wanted to be continuing what I was doing for several years, my spirit was being pulled by my needed desire to focus on spending more time with my family, consistently hitting the gym, and of my latest satisfaction, finding greatest patience and solace with my paintings.
There can only be so much one can manage at that 100 percentage feeling.
I used to blast music in my car, jumping between Keshia Cole, Sarah McLaughlin, or Andrea Bocelli, and all else in between, depending on what mood I was in. Nowadays, I drive alone most always in silence, meditating on my own thoughts, feeling serenity in the comfort of my own entity being momentarily untampered.
So, when encountering and engaging with others either in the home, at school, or with wonderful, mostly retired ladies in my Zumba classes, I know I must play to their tune, not mine.
Silence is for me, not for those around me.
I wasn’t always this way.
I recall trying to crank the music from a radio station in Papa’s used car when I was a freshman in high school. I also recall how he withstood the volume level for probably less than a minute before hastily trying to find the volume tuner to lower the sound down to a bare minimum, in his convulsing way, exclaiming that the music was demonic- “demonyo!” as he would suggest.
That was the first and last time I also recall ever touching the volume tuner in Papa’s car.
Now, here I am. Seeking peace and silence myself.
So interesting. Life. Growth and development.
One must continue to laugh.
The only reason why I even thought to turn on the radio before cranking up the volume in Papa’s car was due to that eerie silence you feel when no words can be found between a loving father who I could sense knew not what to say to his inevitably growing-up and eventually, out, daughter.
Your heart, mind, body, and spirit search for the right words to express the inner you, while at the same time, looking for that very same you still lurking into crevices of its development.
Now, I protectively listen to all that I’ve gathered, as if listening attentively to my own thoughts and what I now selectively allow to enter.
There is this siphoning of the world that narrows. What seemed so enticing to take in any time, any chance I could up to my at least first four decades of my life has taken a solidifying turn.
Now, Peace on Earth, becomes too real in message, not just words.
It is as if I am now making a check list each moment of what I have gathered for the day, itemizing, while reflectively determining what must be let go with the minimum, if any, that must be withheld.
You pick up enough talk of others while you walk and all of a sudden, you realize there must be care in the rest of your steps or to stumble would cause much unwanted time unnecessarily used up.
So, when my husband puts on music as we drive that I am not feeling, I quietly volunteer myself as a disc jockey (DJ, for the new generation) suggesting and playing various cds (compact discs- And, yes. We still enjoy these in the car.) until we both come to one agreed upon.
The stealthiness there, is, the cds I suggest were pre-chosen by me, giving my husband respect of the thought he was in charge of choice.
A retired mother of grown children had opened up my eyes one day by telling me that whenever she gave her children a choice, what they didn’t know was that any of the choices offered were all okay with her.
The trickery of life.
Whether be it a wife, mother, teacher, and so much in between within roles to find oneself, when the air cannot be escaped, one must learn to adapt to ways of getting through it.
You may not like the music around you being played, the air that is created from the sound of the environment you’d rather not be in, but we must do what we can for peace.
A piece for you; a piece for me.
Peace for you. Peace for me.
