What Drives You Forward?

I’m going to ask you to sit for a few moments and consider:

What drives you?

Everyone fills their days with something. Do you have 2 separate lists? One of what you do and another of what you’d LIKE to do? What gets you up in the morning? What motivates you to keep going? What gives you pleasure and gives you a sense of fulfillment? No need to worry over your responses- no judging.

I’m going to use lines from BTS’s velvety seductive track, “Pied Piper”, off their new album Love Yourself: Her (remember that no judging rule, OK?). This piece is NOT a critique of this amazing song (if you want that, check out Tamar Anderson’s Billboard article here.) I am simply using it to discuss a topic we can can all relate to:

Obsessions.

Follow the sound of the pipe, follow this song

It may be a little dangerous but I’m very sweet

Many times we start with passions. There are things we find exciting- from traditional to novel to even contrary to what’s considered normal in our circles. Many times we stumble onto something that just seems to fit who we are. And we dive headlong into it.

But stop...Not just one hour, but a year or two flash by...

I’m takin’ over you

Passion dances along a fence with obsession. While I cannot speak as an expert or for everyone, in my mind, a big difference is that we can set a passion aside to enjoy other things. With obsession, we lose that ability.

Tweens and teens have been described as obsessed. Alas, this inability to release a topic is all too common in the adult world as well. Obsessions can be relatively harmless. They can also become extremely dangerous. For us, or others.

I play the flute endlessly  

I'm your guilty pleasure

Passions and obsessions give us pleasure, or at least offer some form of comfort in their familiarity. We joke about our guilty pleasures: chocolate, anyone? Today, we can literally get almost anything at any time. This can open a way to dependence upon whatever it was that started simply as a passion.

I wrote a piece about this in the spring titled Dream and Bloom. We each have only a certain number of dawns to experience before our final sunset. Our days and our pleasures should improve us and those around us. They should enlighten us. Not destroy us. Not shrink us.

I’m testing you  

Like the fruit from the tree of good and evil

At the beginning of this piece, I told you not to judge what you were thinking about. Now it’s time to do just that. Now, we can look at our lists, think back over what we were considering and ask ourselves:

Are we following a pied piper?

Are we blindly following a dangerous tune and path?

Or:

Are we writing and conducting our own music?

Are we stepping toward a future where we can all sing and dance together?

Love...and Life

This past weekend, I immersed myself in a family wedding. What an uplifting experience.

We’ve lived away from our hometown for almost 20 years and have always been a bit quiet. I tell people that I’m a born introvert who’s learned to act like an extravert for brief periods of time. Growth mindset, right? I still can’t say it’s natural, however I enjoy it more and more as time goes on.

The power in this day became apparent when we were at the ceremony. The atmosphere was relaxed and convivial from the beginning. I’m more of spiritual person as opposed to a religious one. The priest set the tone for me well when his sermon focused on what love looks like in practice. I like descriptive examples, being a visual learner.

I began applying the term in my mind (yes, sorry, my mind did wander, I admit) in more broad terms than marital love. I looked around at the crowd. So many faces I either did not know or recollect only from years gone by. We change. We evolve. But there are some universals to consider.

What is this “love” thing?

I’ve been writing lately on teacher emotional & social support, the type 1 diabetes I have and of the hobbies and interests I have grown to embrace. There’s quite a bit of weight and seriousness (and sometimes complete fluff) to those subjects. I made some connections when I interchanged “love” and “life” in my mind that I thought were worth considering.

Life is passion.

When we’re really living, we are doing what makes us happy and fills our buckets. I’ve said this before: I want a life that I don’t feel the need to take a vacation from in order to escape from it. I wish that for everyone. Living with passion. Loving with passion. Those are huge gifts. Finding  ways to them can be a life’s work.

The passions in my life that I never dreamed of include learning to work with students, running, jamming to Korean pop, writing to and about teachers, blogging and having all this plus 2 children. Your passions will be wonderfully different than mine. There’s such beauty to that.

Life is sharing.

Oh, it’s so much easier to remain silent. It’s so much safer to fade into the woodwork. I have made a fool of myself and probably angered a person or two over the years as I’ve opened up more and more. However, I think I’ve helped once or twice. I've learned and grown immensely. I’ve included my voice with others’ voices in solidarity and I’ve been a voice of dissent that's lead to overall growth in our combined understandings. Sometimes, I do some good. Sometimes, I make huge mistakes. It’s important to keep trying and building.

Couples need to share things in order to build their ties. The same goes for all of us. Life is about making connections and seeing ourselves in others. There was a bunch of giving for this weekend’s successful (and fun) events- well before the wedding day. A reminder: when in doubt, give.

Life is everything and anything.

I’ve touched on it above but it bears repeating in detail. At this wedding, there was a rainbow of personalities, skills, beliefs, abilities, interests and perspectives in attendance. I have my thing. Every other person in that celebration had theirs. As it should be.

We danced. We sang. We ate. We drank. We laughed. We cried. Together.

We came from all directions and regardless of time and distance, shared experience brings us Together.

We’re stronger together. That’s love. That’s life.

Best wishes to the new couple and to all of us through Life!!

Love and life. Teachers love their lives but sometimes it gets away from us. We’re well into July- there’s still time to order a copy on Amazon of my guided journal, Dear Teachers, for yourself or the special teachers in your life! Dear Teachers makes a great gift of positive encouragement for education professionals- if you are an administrator, principal, youth group leader or home schooler please contact me to discuss its value to your staff!

Email me dearteachers2017@gmail.com for signed copies and special bulk pricing opportunities.