Cognitive Dissonance – the mental discomfort or psychological stress experienced when a person simultaneously holds conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes, or behaves in a way that contradicts them. Developed by Leon Festinger in 1957, (AI overview)
The mind set to conquer or surrender, to perceive abundance or not enough, to understand sacrifice or agonize on suffering. To simply be or, not to be.
Two could have the same exact phase in life or experience. One will dance to the sound of the wind blowing amidst any frigidity from within or without; the other will cower to every infliction of one’s temperance, believing every step should instead be merry and bright, abhorring any incoming storm and the rain to follow.
Both attacked the same. Only one may make it out a victor at the end of each challenge.
Our fortune and blessings. Sometimes, the rain gets in our eyes, clouding our steps to reign.
The interesting part I realize in my golden years is, you don’t need to arrive to the throne to wear your crown and hold your scepter. Those were given at birth. That strength, that capability, that mindset- all who believed and kept believing, kept achieving.
The goodness of the heart, mind, body, and spirit can channel the greatest fortitude of one’s greatness, blocking away doubt and fear.
And, yet, the attacks enter not over, under, or through, but quite at times, within.
Some, unfortunately, renounce their reigning early amidst the seasons of rain, too cold, wet, and drenched to comprehend purpose for the training.
Even with all armor on: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, I have to understand instability in stance and in motion.
Diabolical schematics, stealthy but vicious in manner, desiring to take down or replace any of which are positive energy to one that is heavily negative.
Teachers have now made it to just weeks left of the school year. As I have joked before in my own way of making light of all things, times off are given throughout the year for us to recover and recharge in between moments of strain and tension.
And, then, there is the summer break, the much awaited, whereupon we arrive to the finish, we are given a much longer break to breathe, relax, and let go. The unspoken Why? So that we may, again, build excitement to start anew with a new set of faces who will each be bringing in a new set of energy.
New faces, new energy, new challenges.
Not one year exactly the same from another. A sequel, however, with the same idea.
It’s like the M&Ms commercial, where you may at times feel like you are in the worst scenario possible, thinking to fall into a much bigger, treacherous part soon enough. And, then, during what seemed like the most climactic scene, you discover all is well, that your situation wasn’t the end.
You are reminded of the collective purpose for your part. To send the most important message- Eat M&Ms during movies.
You must find light of any manner any way you can.
Like parenting, there comes a time in teaching where the ongoing, unpredictable happenings of being surrounded by many developing hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits cloud and can make weary your very own thoughts.
From home to school, instead of glaring upon the beautiful blooms of your garden, sprouting weeds, vines, and stick bushes do best to creep in, distracting you from remembering to stop and smell the flowers (or, eat M&Ms during movies).
Both of our youngest are attending the same school I teach at and though I make a point not to get in their way, I couldn’t be the happiest and proudest each chance I see a glimpse of them walking to and fro in the hallways as I quietly did with my daughters.
Aside from my two daughters and now, my youngest boys, arguing with one another like siblings do, to school and back, and me wishing they didn’t for my peace and harmony for my own students to face, I couldn’t have it any better.
My children, my most precious gems, innately exemplifying the try for continuous excellence, I proudly hold dear in silence. They’ve witnessed my ups and downs as a teacher to many students who have come my way. I perhaps could have thrown in the towel many moons ago.
Here I am, still, tending to what I view as my annuals, my yearly students, the colors and energy they each bring to my garden.
If not me, then, who? Oh, here I am, still.
My husband, a strong and tough breed who many times sacrificed wanting to be a vulnerable and loving father to keep his family on the path for success and many victories, I owe to being a teacher.
He was the one who was there, directing my way to now. To me and my children’s fortune and gratitude, he guards and directs with no avail.
I should always feel so fortunate. So, when I stand before my students, even when the voice inside me continues to incessantly chant, “If not you, then, who?”, why is it that sometime amidst each year, I begin to wonder, Is it still supposed to be me, though?
I get holidays and summers off. I am home to share the moments and endless memories my husband, children, and I create together. Who can argue that this is not the best career for raising a family?
And, yet, I get the question from one of my students, “Did you always want to be a teacher?”
I heard my simple and rather direct answer, “No.”
Wait. I have been tested to stay home after my two youngest were born and I should recall my aching desire to come back into a classroom.
I needed to hear myself justify that answer.
Feeling silence as students processed, I heard my voice follow with an epiphanal moment for me by telling them that perhaps due to impactful teachers like my aunt in the Philippines, my language arts teacher who helped me to discover I had a singing voice to go along with my love for writing lyrics and my sixth grade teacher who took me to my Spelling Bees to which I probably would not have been able to attend, here I am.
To add, Mr. Nagel, Mr. Nicholson, Mr. Bender, Coach Slye- all who added to the planting of the honor of service to teach.
My heart, my mind, my body, and my spirit were all empowered by them. I just didn’t ever acknowledge their strength, belief, and good spirits planted in me until now.
How do I explain to my students or any other teacher who have always pictured being one until the day their dreams came true, that teaching to me is servitude at greatest challenge?
I had been positively impacted by some priceless greats that I have been chanced for years to emulate at best.
A naturalized, female, impecunious minority immigrant- granted the blessing to have such grace and opportunity to have part in the lives of many children. And, yet, my paintings, my writings, my discoveries, my explorations, my creations, in addition to my set purposes, all get placed aside, awaiting for their full turn and focus.
Simply, if my hundred belongs here, then all else should have nothing of me elsewhere. Here lie conflicted emotions.
I recall wanting to be a lawyer upon the words of my father suggesting the role for my growing character. I then recall, after winning a role in Mock Trial in high school, realizing that a courtroom was a stage with an audience, a lead or two due by law to exonerate one possibly guilty and another or team to imprison a possibly innocent.
No, not I.
I recall wanting to be a neurosurgeon to having a doctorate degree to lecture in psychology to being an industrial/organizational psychologist to most recently a clinical forensic psychologist.
I laugh and think, This is perhaps why I still am a teacher- I have yet to truly understand my next path to take.
My love for learning perhaps driven by the memories of my mother graduating top of her class for dental assistance and yet, dreading to become one.
Could it be I teach so that I may stay as close to remaining a student, still hungry for endless knowledge, siphoning from my students all information they have gathered throughout their days?
In between the unnecessary, thankfully, you can find and delve into much of what is necessary for all to continue to grow and grow well. That of whom includes me.
How should there be any regret to becoming a teacher whence this role helps each crossing your way pave their path toward their own greatness? This rewarding feeling sews up and heals any hurt.
A mind can venture and wander as to other possibilities of who to be within a phase in life, but isn’t this part of not truly understanding one’s truest potential the same trickery for many?
The heart, mind, and spirit toil with the body at times to be elsewhere, to covet the other side. That other side of who you could have been.
More energy, more riches, more time, more power, more recognition. More of everything else perceived for you to not already possess.
All of a sudden, another you seems so much more inviting, your mind aching for greater challenge, your heart feeling your thoughts, your spirit wanting to grant your ask, and thus, your body desiring to follow.
Then, there is this inner ask for absolute peace, to serve no one no more. Just to be and no longer not to be. To be in abundance of endless time to do as one pleases from the time the body awakens to the moment it recharges to sleep.
To conquer all conquests, one focus at a time without anyone’s interruption. To having no more sacrifice or agony for others but for one’s choice of doing.
Is this a thought to think will ever fulfill me or reward me for my times of sacrifice now?
My husband reminds me as he always did during my struggles in caring for our five amidst their helpless years, with words of encouragement, that all this will just be a chapter before I know it. He is absolutely right. And, yet, like several chapters, moments can be brutal.
Should I be in admittance of perhaps wanting or desiring what is not yet steadily granted?
Is it what I am not but know I can be or simply, do I desire more time to just do all of what I’m not getting to do when I want to do them?
The conflicted uncertainty aches at me.
Whereas I was at home during the times I couldn’t think whereupon I repeatedly just chased my youngest two around to serve them or even beforehand where I couldn’t wait to put myself in a classroom, I now am starting to feel the curtain for teaching is beginning to drop.
This year alone, I served over 120 each day, roughly 26 students per hour.
I have started to ache for my heart, mind, body, and spirit to be alone, as if it hasn’t been for some time, silently anticipating that less than half hour after students have stepped out to their lunch so I can lock myself quietly in my room just to sit and… think to myself for myself in the same manner I searched for such a time when raising my youngest two at home.
Time so shortened before I once again have to meet my next group of students at the door for my next class.
Every year, the pattern is there. I should be so happy as I had been upon returning back about a decade ago.
And, yet, I come to realize. It wasn’t all about the pattern I craved to have back; it was also finding time to be alone with my thoughts.
To be left alone with my own self. The freedom to just think for myself. The fun and enjoyment with thinking about what I’m thinking. Alone with metacognition, seemingly my most precious, hidden accompaniment I am starting to bitterly not get to visit as much without interruption.
I have grown to admire those who dared ignore everything else or surreptitiously found ways to focus on their thinking.
I picture Albert Einstein going through patent applications before sneaking out his own works at his desk.
I learned his eventual successes came with some major choices. Not having ever met his born daughter to even the time later where she passed was an unfathomable discovery for a mother like me to grasp.
My husband, though I have said to myself countless times, I would never ask for his role or position in our home, seeing how well and how strong his stance has been, I have only to covet his freedom of time to think in isolation for longer periods of time.
My servitude as a wife, mother, and teacher goes without saying that alone time is but a luxury, so few and little in between.
I have arrived to such acceptance that I find myself, indeed, covetous at times that at the very moment I sense the enter of such feeling, I immediately shame myself for an ask of what would be mine if meant to be.
It is the very last of the ten commandments I see myself failing to follow, to my acknowledgment and admittance.
No. I covet no one. It isn’t that.
I covet deep, unwarranted, uninterrupted, uninhibited thinking time for me, myself, and I.
I covet the times of those now whose leadership of works I listen to, wondering how much opportunity they simply find alone to think about their thinking followed by times for action. To hyper-focus.
While I enjoy and embrace the ways of femininity, it is my toiling wonderings of how my roles, though all priceless, could ever integriously warrant dereliction of duty.
Uninterruptively and perhaps to most covet, supportably, to plainly and simply just have alone time to abysmally- think.
It hadn’t dawned to me until I saw this one comedy where a comedian had actually shared that understanding about himself with his wife-to-become.
He forewarned that there would be times in their marriage where she would find him doing absolutely nothing because that day might just be a thinking day.
A thinking day.
I never thought of such a given thing until he spoke the words.
You can have that? For everyone to know that you are in isolation just to… think?
Servitude allows no such or much, I have lived to experience.
Of course, one is given time to always think. But the breakage of thinking is at most the constant happenings upon listening to those in need of you.
I have completed in my head Master’s submission entries while driving my older three children around to parks and events, giving myself thirty minutes, an hour at rarest moments, fortunate time to hurry and type up my collected thoughts.
I have missed several, if not, many, could have been bonding moments with my own children given the dual works of my mind selfishly thinking of my own problem solving matters running through my head.
I have been guilty of being caught having stopped listening to my husband several sentences before his ask to give my opinion upon hearing him repeat, “So, what do you think?”
Though rebellious due to my inherent curiosities of what could be on the other side, I served my parents by not engaging in things that would hurt myself or pain them with financial hardships as they already endured so much of their own.
Though youngest born, I held nothing against my older siblings not grasping that upon coming home last, many times I found no more food left for me to eat. I took to a mindset the thankfulness of leftovers when found, retreating to my room where I was always grateful for silence.
Though having moved at least ten times by the time I reached sixth grade, I stood by my parents side without question of where next. I taught myself to enjoy moments met with many who would be just temporary in my life arriving to a quality towers over quantity understanding so early of age.
I have loved my dearest husband, partner, and greatest friend for life, to where the journey of convincing this man who has seen and heard reasons to never trust another incessantly share with me his thoughts to where I am left to listen, grateful to be that one, trustworthy of his vulnerability.
I have loved my children like an eagle, with diligence and determination to create a loving and nurturing home. Like the mother eagle who knows it must start to take one twig out at a time so that the nest will be too uncomfortable to stay, no matter how painful, the wings must learn to fly alone, pushing off each baby eagle out to test their wings.
I have cared for other children beyond necessary means, trying my best to relate and thus, dismiss, parental choices as I took part to fill gaps in heart, mind, and spirit. My body, so many days, so many weeks, so many months, so many years of drainage and strain. I smile a breath of finish every last day of the year.
Summer will arrive soon enough. I will close the door of what I refer to at home as my “quiet room”, finally finding myself alone, to think to myself for myself.
Those rare moments.
Soon enough. I hang on. Summer, the euphemism for a much needed break awaits. (summer – the sum of masculated energies recharged)
If not me, then who? Still, I suppose. Here I am.
I hear the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger as I laugh to listen, “I’ll be back.”
The dissonance of cognition. Boo. And, phooey.
