For as long as I can remember, I've always been trying to grow up. Being the youngest in a large family isn't easy, because you're always looking to the future. As the youngest, you get to watch your brothers and sisters grow up. They go through school and college, achieving different goals along the way. Some of them get married, even have kids! All the while, everyone around you whispers in your ear (both literally and figuratively) "When will it be your turn?" "What will you do with your life?"
"What will you be when you grow up?"
You spend your childhood looking up at everyone, trying to be like them. To play with the big kids and gain their respect before its time. Yet, eighteen comes and goes into nineteen, twenty, etc. And to be perfectly honest, you never feel any different. You're always little brother and in most respects you never quite feel like a grown up. You become hard wired into thinking you're still a kid and you need to keep working to be more like your siblings to make that shift into adulthood.
Until suddenly you realize you've been there all along....
It didn't hit me until I taught my final class with my 2nd Grade High Schoolers. They not only said they'd miss my teaching, but the class even went so far as to thank me for my teaching! A few of them stood up and bowed to me before I left the room for the last time. I know there are different ways of showing respect in Korea, but I'd never expected to receive such respect from my students.
It took me totally by surprise!
As I left, I thought to myself, "Holy (expletive delete) Batman! They actually think I'm a real teacher!"
But then again, I am a real teacher, I've just never felt like one until now.
Yes, it took me eight months on the job to realize I'm actually a professional teacher.
(I've been called smart, but never self-aware. I suppose there's a reason for that....)
It's strange how we put on persona in our lifetimes, son, brother, friend, employee, boyfriend, lover, enemy, writer, actor, musician, laborer, Michael, on and on and on. They're all faces we wear, they are us, but in a way they aren't. I suppose a soul is like a rough cut gemstone, each persona is a facet in the surface of our souls that shows something different when we let it shine in the light.
I brushed aside this notion of being a real teacher to cope with my active schedule, but I mentioned it in conversation to a friend of mine and its resonated with me since. She helped me consider that in spite of how I feel about my work and my school, I'm an adult in the lives of my students. I honestly never considered myself as an adult to my students, as I feel I foster no relationship with them. Since I teach at multiple schools, I always spend my time planning and thinking about all my different classes. I rarely get the time to hang out with my students and really get to know them. Hell, I can't even recall their names.
Yet, there are a couple students who I know genuinely care about me being their teacher. There is a boy in my Middle School who clearly has special needs, he can't speak a lick of English, but he loves seeing me! He's always asking me questions in Korean, and even though I just smile and shrug, he's excited to say hi.
The other week, I was waiting at the bus stop to leave the small town of Seoseok. Waiting, a boy I had taught in 6th grade who recently came to Seoseok Middle School ran up to me. He had with him a load of sweets from the local shop (as most students do once school lets out). He's another student who speaks little to no English, but he insisted on sharing his bottle of pink lemonade ice cubes with me!
(Actually he kinda force fed me the ice cubes. Silly and sweet of him, but one ended up in my breast pocket! Not that I noticed until I arrive back in Hongcheon to discover a large wet spot on my shirt. I got to walk through town looking as if I had started lactating, but to be honest, I didn't mind)
How you feel,
the patterns of thinking you persist in,
they impact your outlook,
but they are not (necessarily) your reality.
We often say life is a journey, but in doing so we make life about destinations, about futures. We lost sight that life is only ever the present, the past has already slipped away, and the future is just an idea of things to come. It's funny when we obsess over a future, only to find that we've been there all along....
