"Oh, so you just watch babies all day."
"No, I teach all day."
"Yeah, babies. So you're like a babysitter."
I am a teacher. In just three weeks, I will have a classroom of twenty incredible, young human beings. In my classroom, they will make friends, explore, learn, and gain the tools to navigate their expanding world.
It is for them that I wake up every morning at 5:30am and embark on a daily 4-hour-long commute. It is for them that I overcome my fear of public singing and learn to recite children's tunes by heart. It is for them that I bite my tongue and politely explain to my family that I am in fact a "real teacher" and that this is in fact my "real job".
It's hard work to be doing something that your family openly disapproves of and, on a good day, considers a "break" before medical school.
But this is not a break. This is not a gap year. This is not service work that I'm doing in the inner city. This is my job. This is my daily commitment. And thanks to my students, this is my joy.
I'm writing this as a reminder for myself to return to on days when I feel defeated and completely spent; days that feel like shit and quite possibly involve child-sized shit. And the reminder is this: Whether they feel like it or not, regardless of what went on at home, every child who steps into my classroom has come to learn. So whether I feel like it or not and regardless of what goes on in my own home, I will be there for my students.
There will always be the temptation to treat whatever I'm doing as a "break." Just something I'm doing until the next thing―the real thing. Just something I have to push through until Friday... until summer... until it's over.
So I think we have to fight to find the joy in every day. We have to fight against the exhaustion that makes us look forward to the weekend and the dissatisfaction that makes us dread Mondays. Of course, shit days will be shit days―always. But I believe that even those days have joy that can be fought for and won. And it is a joy that is beyond our circumstances and satisfaction. It is one that gives us the advocacy to say, "I take ownership of my life. I am alive."
I am living my life. Life is not merely happening to me. Time is not simply passing me by. I am here. I am present. I am alive.
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church....a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitudes.” - Charles R. Swindoll