Genuineness? Purity? All that good stuff that is right?
The blind can’t see; the deaf can’t hear. Quite good reasons hindering one to fully grasp or understand the scope of what surrounds them.
When one doesn’t see or hear, the challenge may be much more difficult to truly know.
Those to be weary of? The ones who feel and know truth but rather, look the other way and pretend not to see or hear.
Instead, they gather who they can together to make sense of their perspective, ignoring even the facts presented.
They see the truth. They hear the truth. They perhaps, know the truth. Their truth is the only one they want to accept.
No matter the truth, otherwise, they direct you to theirs, convinced that they are what’s good for you.
Have you dared ask- What good have they actually done?
No matter the truth, otherwise, they subtly coerce you with theirs, that they are the ones who care for you.
Have you dared ask- A person that doesn’t help you to be the best version of yourself- is this genuine care for you?
Will not a person who only wants what is best for you tell you what you need to know?
Will not a person who only hopes you see where you are going provide a lamp for today so you may have light of what’s ahead?
Will not a person who truly cares for you place themselves at risk in the frontlines just to help you?
Will not a person persevere even to a point where they are to be hated- despised, even, focused on redirecting you to the right path with hopes it is still not too late?
Not many who take the wrong path can stop before it’s too late.
Not many who take the wrong path will stop before it’s too late.
Will not many, then, endure the realms of quiet regret with all the rest- the blind and deaf by choice?
You breathe. You breathe to have the energy to keep on with your purpose, that of which is purely right.
You relax. You relax knowing that because you deeply feel you are doing what is right, the truth prevails itself.
You let go. You let go of what you cannot control; opposition is position going the opposite direction.
This is the forgiveness to give others when you not only see ahead but so much more.
I am starting to be convinced that moving around so much up to my sophomore year in high school (I count twelve times to remember), was part of my training before reaching adulthood.
Talking about standing alone amongst new faces, after new faces, after new faces. Next. lol.
I witnessed and experienced joy and pain, confusion, delusion, perplexity, along with humanity to inhumanity, to the boomerangs of ignorance from afar to up close.
I understood motives even if those who exhibited such behaviors weren’t conscious of their own reasons as to why.
You intrigue yourself with the opportunity to ask, while observing, Why?
By connecting one incident witnessed after another, I began to see the world under the reasons of why people do what they do.
I am not always accurate with my conjectures but to be precise has no matter. It is the possibilities of why people do what they do that has collectively helped me to grasp understanding of the world and its people.
There is much gratitude in the training to understand perspective.
In understanding vantage points, one can direct the mind to see from different angles.
When you know and see such ahead, you can create some form of awareness of what one is heading toward.
This sense of awareness truly helps in helping others prevent wrong turns.
When given such role, there is much use for the awareness.
While my husband and I have arrived to look back and truly embrace the joy we’ve had in our tireless efforts to direct our children, given each of our own circumstances growing up with hardly direction but just sheer, utter drive, we both agree that as much as we have given each of our children, far and above even our own means to give but by endless grace of God, each of our children have more than enough to not only succeed but proceed in life with potential greatness above others.
As we were given, the choice to do the rest is up for the individual taking.
Accountability, responsibility, honorability- all of which is the true character of each individual.
Thus, when you uphold such virtues, you, in a sense, enjoy the walks upon the beaches while making sure to pick up every starfish to place back into the waters to find their way.
Rain, thunder, or lightning, the role given cannot promise all sunshine. Still, you do.
Every year I find myself driven to stand firm to help my students see the world from another’s point of view if theirs seem convoluted by a narrowed path.
Calling out a wrong under the care to help direct to the right is not easy.
Five children and many thousands of students later, I have found myself standing alone at times to uphold expectations.
No. Not because of arrogance or pure egotism. In fact, do either role long enough, the question of whether or not one has only gotten softer becomes more of the reality.
Caring hurts. Caring hurts in heart, mind, body, and spirit. There is constant shifting of energy to make it through each day.
However, there is this inner strength in you that stands firm, not even thinking to care if you should find yourself to stand alone in the frontlines.
Fear may be whispering in your ear but you stand firm nonetheless.
Something in you clicks into fearlessness to just keep doing right.
No. Not for superiority, heroism, or even a win.
Do you know what comes across the mind of one who risks being mocked or looked at as the complete roadblock to other’s movement for the sake of those they are trying to protect or help?
I will do what it is I feel I must do again and again for you if it should save you now to get you to the greatness of tomorrow. It is for you, I risk me.
I know because I have lost count to how many times I have felt this way and have heard myself not only utter this in my heart, mind, body, and spirit, but have felt the pure certainty of my intentions to protect.
I look at each and hear my heart, my mind, my body, and my spirit say, You are (to infinity and beyond!) welcome.
To protect your greatness in the future with what is trying to deter you from getting there today.
I risk me for you.
You are (to infinity and beyond!) welcome.
Here is the most punitive part to this very decision- Those you are putting your very self in line for give you looks of disregard, disdain, and denial that you are at any levels to truly be on their side.
When you oppose a wrong behavior, you are seen as going against the current- regardless of how strong the right force may be.
Opposition could cause many to crumble at times, even the strongest warriors.
Whereas all you want before you is a smile and peaceful look, you now see a questionable temperament before you of your one moment ago choice to correct.
Here is what I have found to accept in years to observe: Be in a room full of right, the wrong will easily crumble; Be in a room full of wrong, the right will eventually assimilate to survive.
Let the majority either express indifference or fear to side against even the most correct or true, one finds themself to stand alone, the rest having learned to tolerate or accept wrong as the (new) right.
High expectations, high standards, high beliefs are questioned by actions of opposition, those who rather do everything to go and rebel against such possibilities.
Why? Sometimes there is just no answer to that other than an action, whether unwanted or wanted, sensible or nonsensical, must just meet a reaction.
You ask a child Why? and no longer are surprised to just get an answer of, “I don’t know. I just felt like it.”
It would be so easy to laugh off dreams and aspirations, tell each and everyone to just stop trying now because there would be no glory at the end.
It would be so easy to just sit back and just let the young minds be and do as they please, ignoring the disruptions.
It would be so easy to think by having low or no expectations one wouldn’t have to work so hard. Kids would love you for being easy and accepting of whatever just so all are enjoying themselves. You would perhaps be remembered as the one who let everyone do whatever they felt to do to pass an hour.
So easy. So easy to not do a thing.
Does that not suggest neglect? A dereliction of your duty to not just teach but lead everyone into each of their correct path?
Does one who truly loves, who truly cares, direct one to a deep pit of eventual darkness or to be lost in the end?
You are enough?
Accept you for you?
A seed, a bud, or even, a bloom? Does one believe to have finished?
Is this love or hindrance to further and greater potential to expand?
If born into greatness does that suggest one is also great? Or, does this suggest the opportunity to become the same?
If given all resources to be great, does this promise one to become easily great as well?
We have all the resources. Are we all great?
As a teacher, though moments can be tough to face, I have admired those who speak up to make a stand.
Making a stand for what you feel is right may need some taming but like fire, must not burn out for times where it will surely be needed.
I have had to stand for myself throughout time before being on the other end.
I was a tacky dresser in junior high. Not by choice, I embrace myself now to laugh.
I was a tacky dresser because of several factors.
For one, we moved around a lot. By the time I had arrived to even enter the doors of a junior high school, as I’ve mentioned in past entries, I had already attended six primary schools.
No. I was not a military brat; just a child following her parents who struggled to find a home away from home around those who struggled to make their own.
While I clearly could think of this as a negative impact on my life, and perhaps there were pains along the way to quickly heal from before another was to be overcome, I truly believe all that took place in the path I journeyed was a benefit to my becoming.
When you don’t seem to get you right for others around, you eventually embrace that you never will.
You begin to embrace the only one left to still handle- you.
Other than prayer and time alone with my parents and siblings, I had no one to concretely influence me. Whatever anyone, if anyone, had any form of impact, it was merely not enough to hardly make a mark on my already one-foot out the door circumstances.
I could assimilate; just not quite settle in to allow anything enough to sink in me. If my interactions with others were set-up as binary codes, I definitely withheld encryptions within encryptions.
With hardly any mirrors around growing up, I trusted how I pictured myself to look like from within.
With no magazines or pictures to compare myself to because the only thing close were the Sunday newspaper opened up for me to read or those romance novel covers that even in my earliest recollection, I understood to be (humorously) unreal, I dug deeper into me.
How would I know if I were to look anything different if there were no subliminal messages around me to tell me so?
Shopping for school clothes was non-existent for me to a degree where by the time I actually had a taste of school shopping right before going into high school (I believe one outfit), I had started a job where, then, my brother took me to the mall with Mama.
I look back now and laugh, again. I was still tacky. My brother chose a fitted dress and a Bolero hat for me with heel pumps and a coat to match. With the exception of the hat being brown, the dress, shoes, and coat were a fuschia pink.
I don’t know what I was being dressed as to compare, but I don’t think it was for a freshman girl about to walk into the doors of a high school.
Tacky, I just didn’t know it. And because I didn’t, I was in love with me.
For once, I afforded something new.
By the time high school started, I don’t recall ever wearing that hat, but somehow, I managed to do me regardless.
I stood alone. As I walked around to see everyone dress in sameness as I did in junior high, I knew solo would be most likely my continued ride in life.
However, like I had always done, I would just take a deep breath, relax, and, let go.
I had been so used to eyes looking at me each time I entered yet a new school that no longer did they place any worry in me.
Think of mountains. When you stand alone, you are named. When you are but just a cluster, you are seen as a range.
Accidental happenstance. I was a mountain that stood alone. Whether it was because no one dared think to be next to me or that I dared not think to affiliate with any others who may just reject me, I just had to be me.
After all, I didn’t have time to be anyone else.
All the rest. They just ranged from taller, shorter, wider, or, narrower. They blended.
As a teacher, as a mother, as a wife, you stand alone before the eyes that see you and the ears that hear you.
You must not falter. Training is what you’ve had.
How great to be loved and honored by children. There is definitely an undeniable loved feeling whenever you are hugged or greeted by a face who looks at you with admiration and respect.
And, yet, true likes and loves cannot be bought as is in the media world. One cannot just place an ad for people to show up and pretend to be on or take your side. Well, perhaps a lie can be bought but that’s exactly what it is- a lie.
They may hate you now. Your driven duty and role cannot fear not being loved.
Don’t expect to have them thank you later. You have said You are welcome at the start.
Remain steady.
Like a mountain, you stand.
