Home Depot is becoming a weekly stop for me as I continue to finish some jobs around my house. I don't really mind going because I get to look at a lot of things that are on my "wish list" and it feels good that I can actually do some of the things myself without hiring someone to do it for me. I learned a lot of handyman work from my father growing up and I now have the opportunity to put that knowledge into action. I look forward to working on the little projects that I get to do and take great pride in knowing that they will be done the way that I want them done. What I don't look forward to is seeing in the store, however, is the selling of holiday items. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the holidays, but I am a purist that believes we should finish one holiday before start looking forward to another. I am not a curmudgeon by any means, but I do have some strong opinions about looking forward so far into the future without taking the time to live in the moment now. I know that I will probably be called a scrooge for writing this, but to those that think so, I say bah humbug!
The ability to look forward to something is an inherent quality that all humans possess. It is a necessary thing because not everything goes the way you want it to and you need to have some ability to look forward to better days ahead. Keeping this in mind, the grind is where the learning comes and it is important to live in the moment and respect that while it may not be perfect, it is necessary to soak it in so you can grow. It is okay to look forward, but not too far because you may miss out on something critical because your focus is on the overall outcome rather than the process.
In the lives of educators, there are a lot of things to look forward to. We look forward to specific lessons we get to teach, we look forward to "jeans" days, we look forward to breaks in the school year, and we even look forward to seeing the lightbulb go on when a kid finally "gets it." Some of us may not want to admit it to others, but we also look forward to the grind of trying to reach those hard to reach students. We look forward to staff meetings, not necessarily because of the content of said meeting, but because we get to see our colleagues who we may not get to interact with on a regular basis. We also look forward to the really tough situations that require a lot of hard work and thinking to solve. Yes, they are tough situations, but we are teachers and we look forward to those things. Not everyone can do our jobs even though they think they can and we look forward to the challenge, just not too far.
As I write this blog, I know that Halloween is tomorrow. I look forward to students and staff celebrating the holiday even though it is probably going to cause some more work for me because kids make some poor decisions and it is only amplified with face paint and costumes. This is not going to squelch my excitement for looking forward to celebrating with them, but I am certainly not going to look too far ahead. I know there is a break coming up that we all desperately need, but I am not going to be the person who is counting down the days until that break because there is a lot of learning and growing that is going to take place in between and that excites me. Each day in between these holidays is a reason to celebrate and enjoy the moments, no matter what challenges they may present. In the meantime, I will refuse to walk down the holiday aisle at Home Depot and look forward until I have given thanks. Instead, I'll just think about doing a bang up job on this plumbing work that I get to do and find joy in the fact that while it is tedious work, it is something that needs to be done. I look forward to accomplishing that task.
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