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Courage Update

After further consideration, I would like to now inform me that I do indeed have courage (see art and home below), and also wisdom and patience and humor and color and glitter and a real bad weakness for perfect hot chocolate.  

Today I did the kind of teaching I love, taking on the voices of Lennie and George in Of Mice and Men (and if you didn't know THAT takes courage, you've never been Lennie in front of 14 year olds), watching kids give speeches (about things like how to avoid senioritis), and reading to prepare for the next few lessons of Ender's Game.  My home is cluttered, but cheerful, glittery, and glow-y.  My kids are bold and curious and creative and super proud of their ideas.

Those things are not created by the faint of heart... or the feint of heart for that matter.  

This life is created, in part, by a woman whose center is variety.  My center is like a giant toolbox filled with thousands of different tools and I can use each one more than adequately.  It takes a brave person to reach in and whip out a different tool for each new situation.  Some tools are, of course, my favorites... laughter and listening for example.  Other tools, like that balls to the walls courage I wrote about last time, do tend to gather dust when using the tool means I might get some kind of sanctions from other people.  But they are all there.  

A few months ago I didn't use the sword of outrage when I should have, so two weeks ago when I was confronted with another opportunity to be furious at someone else's lack of ethics, I had a glaring mirror held up that showed me that that particular sword had gotten crusty from lack of use.  I was furious with myself for letting the tool get that way, for not keeping it at the ready.  But even in the shadow of not liking the image I saw in the  mirror I saw two things:

1. I lead a charmed life. I surround myself with kind and well-intentioned people who are introspective and who want to add good to the world.  Only twice in the last year have I been surrounded by situations as prickly as this!  No wonder my sword is hard to use.

and 

2.  While I have failed at slaying the moral dragons when they reared their sulfur-smelling heads, I have succeeded at readying my sword.  I'm getting all my armor (which looks a LOT like orange overalls) ready so I'm ready to wield that sharpened steel the next time someone dares me to.

In the meantime, I'm living my version of a brave life.  I'm using all the other tools in the tool box that I'm really good at using... the ones I LOVE to use... the ones that let me swing from trees if that's what it takes to make kids learn... the ones that let me see that no one, not even the dragon and not even me, is completely bad or completely righteous.  We are all shades of grey with some light spots and dark spots.  

If my center is truly variety, I have to be good with the truth that there are no good guys and bad guys... just people who mess up on a daily basis.  I also, though, have to be strong when the ordinary person messes up badly enough to be called out so he doesn't do it again.








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