“If you have inner peace, the external problems do not affect your deep sense of tranquility. You are happy regardless of circumstances.”
—The Dalai Lama
Concluding a school day is a lot like finishing a meal—you know immediately whether or not you feel satisfied. When the day is over and we close and lock our door, we know immediately whether we feel full or empty. If there is an empty feeling, it may come from knowing a lesson wasn’t completed or a phone call to a parent wasn’t made. But more likely it is from the fact that we didn’t connect with a child through a wink or a smile, or we did not have the patience with the class that we had resolved to deal with more gracefully and consciously. Then there are days when we leave school feeling wondrously full. Everything was done just as we had planned: lessons completed, papers graded, happy students. On the days that we feel a certain amount of emptiness in the pit of our stomachs we must look back on the exceptional days and know that they will return.
“You can tell how good a deed was by how big a thrill you got out of doing it.”
—Anonymous
This post appeared in A Moment of Peace & Quiet: Meditations for Teachers by Gail G. Mesplay.
