Pushing

I'm pushing thirty.

I have a friend in her fifties. Since that fateful moment of turning fifty she has been in the throws of a renaissance. She is a different woman now then she was before turning that corner. She is writing her novel, traveling and reveling in the success of children well raised.

I will be thirty years old in six months (and fifteen days). I am hoping that turning thirty will be some sort of epiphany in my life but I am sure that I will be disappointed when I woke up when I was newly five years old and I was not bigger or profoundly different.

I do feel older. At work I am a team leader, I am called a ‘veteran,’ and, ‘seasoned.” I am not yet a ‘master teacher,’ but I can be called on for mentoring. When I talk to my peers and we complain about ‘the kids’ we are not talking about our students but the younger, fresher teachers.

I think I shouldn’t wait until I am fifty or even the six months (and fifteen days) until I am thirty to have a renewal or renaissance, or even just to get started with my goals. I should set a goal and work on it now. A new year, a birthday or a traumatic life event might be great time to put things off until but my goals, like most diets, will start tomorrow.

My mentor this school year, whether she knows it or not is the science teacher on our team. She’s the most judicious and attentive person I know, that coupled with her inspiring adherence to her Christian faith make her someone daunting to teach next to, even to know. She would be embarrassed to hear that because she is not vain or arrogant; but her she is formidable nonetheless. I have learned two important things from her about life, and maybe I did not learn them from her but I have seen them lived out in her and that is ultimately the best way to teach and learn.

One of the things that I have learned from her is that life is fully of little things that latch onto us like briars and burs grab onto your socks when you’re hiking and those little things are just minor annoyances. Too often I allow those things in life to latch onto me and become bigger problems than they ought when they can easily be brushed aside.

The other thing that I have learned from the science teacher is that we all have challenges in our lives, your measure as a person is not the challenges in your life but how you face them. Last school year I had a ‘friend’ who carried around her burdens in life like a cross – it was ungraceful, unseemly and unhealthy and she beat everyone she could over the head with that cross, self diagnosing her problems and instead of seeking cures for them using them as an excuse to abuse other people. I feel sorry for her, not because of what happened in her life but of how she reacted to adversity in her life. I prefer to follow the science teacher’s method – a structured problem solving method might be indicative of science teachers – any problem has a solution but the process in which you seek that solution and how you go about solving that problem say a heck of a lot more about you as a person than the problem itself. Too often we all prefer to bear our crosses as crutches rather than overcoming them.

So, before I’m thirty, in six months and fifteen days, I want to take the science teacher’s lesson, her example and internalize them and make the lesson a part of my life. Brush off the small problems in life and handle the real problems in life gracefully. Demosthenes said a lot of things but the thing that is rolling over in my head right now is, A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true. I hope I’m not a dupe.

Comments

[bettyalready]

WOW! I'm 36 now and didn't have any of that thought process at 30. I had it at 33. It's an ongoing work.

[Margaret]

Fabulous post, and your science teacher is certainly someone to be admired and emulated. I am *gasp* 51, and no renaissance has hit me yet. I'm still just living my life, moment by moment. I howled at your description of the kids as the new teachers--we do the same thing!!

[Suburban Island]

I can't even spell renaissance without a spellchecker. I had to cut and paste it from your post to here. I rely on you to know what your doing. Thanks for the truly inspirational post!

[Rebekah (L'empress's UD)]

What a great post! I thought like that when I was five, but not so much since, unfortunately. I hope your life is so much renaissance (with or without the cool clothing) that you can't tell where it began.

and i had no idea you were so YOUNG!