There is one thing I will always run from - myself.
Attention Readers: Dense material ahead.
Grasp with the first and nothing is there. Hold on to the second and a struggle ensues. Irony in power. The more force exerted, the more pushback and vanishing; the less force applied, the opposite happens - things start to flourish.
When being pushed, we always, almost always, push back. Often not in reciprocity, but in retaliation. The rebels in us arise to meet the occasion.
I want to talk about force today.
It is force, or forcefulness, that broke my spirits and waned my enthusiasm for living. I have always, or seem to hold true, a sad predicament - that life is not for me. There is something else than the pressure to live that should drive a person. The propensity to take the next breath deeply is not a matter of prolonging time on earth. This living is concerned with drive. A recognition of spirit shockers. An embracing of lovely invigorating embodied wisps. Some sense lies unnamed, and yet we know it to hold us dearly, and we it.
Lose sense of this 'it' and the body untrammels into consequences. Finding foes to battle, gisting up the cavalry, to drive sense into the untapped, lain dormant senses. When idle, the thing that calls itself a conglomerate of mind and body, finds a point of contention. I begin to wrestle, just like I had done with that drive I had followed with my nose. But now with an imagined or conveniently placed, easily targeted force. I sow my good sides and heart into making this relationship work. Where we invest our time and spirit in is where we will find ownership.
I worked with a school for a year and a half. And I am so disappointed. Systems upon systems fallen apart, never existed, or not in the current logs of existing staff. Feedback is shite, dismal, I wish it could be even a little present. I am bound in a sea of pressure, where top-down forces take their hand, make it heavy to keep us young and inexperienced ones on track to become responsible, stellar, and dedicated teachers of the next generation. I am in. Who isn't?
Big Brother keeps the thoughts of its surveilled hostage. No new thought can enter the system, if so, not for long, as Big Brother does not assimilate the ideas of those it watches. It, rather, repeats the rule of law so that after seven times, the average bumbling employee starts to repeat the words of its master. This route engagement is detrimental to anyone who wants to think for themselves. It makes complacent citizens, passive observers of the world rather than active participants who see themselves as capable of making decisions that touch the lives of others. Every person must know the precious seed they carry and nurture within themselves. Every school or education institution must carry nourishing approaches and environments for all types of seeds to take their course. Not all seeds will turn out the same. And when plants start dying or growing unruly, the institution keeps the forest going, symbiotically.
Each educator has the responsibility and mission to redirect those they come into contact with (at 'work') towards themselves. The true self, naturally emergent, wonderfully exquisite, and effortlessly plain and robust, needs to get help from the outside world to exist. Selves are not created by and for the outside construct. Each organism has a role in the ecosystem and this role must be allowed to show itself.
Power is a corrupting force. Especially in a machine that has already been perpetuating forces of corruption as core processes. Accepted and expected, the unsaid persuasions based on mutual benefit but overall apathy, keeps the wheels of authoritarian leaders turning. Their bums warm the best seats in town. They walk around while clerks tally spreadsheets and enter cheque details endlessly through the working day. Such privileges get to their head, especially when an organization upholds (implicitly) the recognition of certain presiding members as sovereign - we have a problem, Houston, no one wants to move unless the guy we all have our eyes on takes a step. How paralyzed, unworthy, unappreciated the masses are!
Find the self, find the unnamed gold that drives the spirit towards an end not confined by present institutions. Don't run away, run towards.