A personal reflection
When I was still in the classroom I would often offer my Saturday morning reflections, in part fueled by stepping back from another week with adolescents and how that shaped my view on things in the world, political and personal.
Tomorrow my former co-workers report back to school, something last done in that school without me a decade past. My reflections tend to be shaped by other things nowadays.
They are also far more frequent, and perhaps in greater depth - in part because I have more time to reflect, but also because I find it of value to look at things in far greater depth than I have for years.
Over a period of just less than a month I have found myself greatly changed. It started as the result of a chance encounter where I now sit, in my local Starbucks. The implications of that encounter are not yet played out, so I will not now - and may never - share all of it, or of what has flowed. Let it suffice to say that it has led to a serious reflection on how I relate to the world and to people. My spouse and I have talked more openly than we have in a number of years. When I consider possible job opportunities I do so with a different mindset.
I have not been here as much, either in posting diaries or in commenting on those I do post or those of others to which I consider offering my thoughts or observations.
I can share this much. In part because of my advancing age - I am now 66 - I have watched the world flying by me ever more quickly, and my not being as connected as I feel I should be. I want to slow things down, or at least slow myself down.
I also realize that the only way I can honestly related to the world is to be totally open in my heart. That is not as easy as it may sound, for I have been a very wounded person. Many of my wounds have been self-inflicted, and those that were not were things on which I too often obsessed, which paralyzed or distorted my interactions with other people.
I am going to continue this below the squiggle.
Tomorrow my former co-workers report back to school, something last done in that school without me a decade past. My reflections tend to be shaped by other things nowadays.
They are also far more frequent, and perhaps in greater depth - in part because I have more time to reflect, but also because I find it of value to look at things in far greater depth than I have for years.
Over a period of just less than a month I have found myself greatly changed. It started as the result of a chance encounter where I now sit, in my local Starbucks. The implications of that encounter are not yet played out, so I will not now - and may never - share all of it, or of what has flowed. Let it suffice to say that it has led to a serious reflection on how I relate to the world and to people. My spouse and I have talked more openly than we have in a number of years. When I consider possible job opportunities I do so with a different mindset.
I have not been here as much, either in posting diaries or in commenting on those I do post or those of others to which I consider offering my thoughts or observations.
I can share this much. In part because of my advancing age - I am now 66 - I have watched the world flying by me ever more quickly, and my not being as connected as I feel I should be. I want to slow things down, or at least slow myself down.
I also realize that the only way I can honestly related to the world is to be totally open in my heart. That is not as easy as it may sound, for I have been a very wounded person. Many of my wounds have been self-inflicted, and those that were not were things on which I too often obsessed, which paralyzed or distorted my interactions with other people.
I am going to continue this below the squiggle.
