Bird Droppings July 24, 2024
How do we know we are grown up?

I will hopefully be taking stuff to my new classroom in a few days. Boxes gathered through the years of teaching and training. I will be teaching elementary school again this year, only part-time (49%), so as to keep my retirement intact. I spent nearly twenty years teaching in the high school setting and always banged my head against the wall as to why students stopped learning. It seems to happen in elementary school. It is not the teachers necessarily but a culmination of things. In today’s world, we want kids to grow up. This can stop some children from questioning and being curious. We need to let our students be children and let them play.

“The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them; he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself; he becomes wise.” Alden Nowlan

Earlier this week, a former student posted a simple line on my Facebook wall: “If you haven’t grown up by fifty, you don’t have to.” As I read this quote from Nowlan and think in terms of wisdom, not being confined to age but to affect or to understand oneself, I think we cycle wisdom after spending several days with my grandchildren and family. I believe children are born wise and become unwise through societal pressures.

Looking back at the quote I started with, these are amazing words as I only recently became aware of this writer, poet, and essayist from Canada. I wish I had written or said these words. Over the years, I have noticed that students walking about high school for the first few days and being at that adolescent age begin to see the flaws and imperfections, but their perception is to enhance their world and create ripples. They see the flaws and are upset and react negatively. Adults then reciprocate with reactions and behaviors that elicit consequences.

For some, that point of forgiveness comes soon, and for others, it may take many years after leaving home, college, marriage, and their children till forgiveness hits and adulthood, true adulthood, is realized. In some cases, but for that rare few, wisdom can come earlier, and they are wise from an early age. I find trust follows a similar road as we move through life; we realize that we cannot trust everyone, we tend to forgive and forget, and then we realize we should trust everyone.

My dear friends, as we embark on a new journey every day, try to trust and forgive two good vocabulary words for the day and seek peace and balance in your life. As I do every day, please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and your hearts and always give thanks namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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