catching up.

I haven't had any time to write here for awhile with my new grad school project and schedule. I'm finding that it's a lot more work than I was anticipating but that's as it should be considering the level of the endeavor. I like learning, even things I don't really care much about, because my world expands as I consider other points of view and I become aware of the complexity and richness of life in this modern world. Answers to the pressing problems we're all finding ourselves in these days, don't come easily, and every answer we discover and implement affects other aspects of our crowded lives. We overlap so with others that our choices often have residual affects that we weren't expecting. Still, we tend to prefer the full, complicated, busy life to its alternative and being connected to others helps insure a healthy mind, body, and spirit. I get the desire to pull back sometimes, to hide out and indulge the introverted part of my personality. Then I think about how short our time really is here on planet earth and how quickly the human configuration of my social world can change and I decide to plod on, soaking up whatever it is that I'm supposed to be learning and contributing my meager lunch to the grand buffet. Every so often, something so astounding and unexpected happens that I'm overwhelmed with gratitude that I didn't miss it. People really are the coolest thing going and I'm glad I know lots of them and am getting to know many more.

I'm doing my field work in an elementary school. It's been some time since I've been in an elementary school environment and I find myself being flooded with memories almost every day of that period in my own life, how both amazing and awful it was and how my experiences during that period have impacted my entire life right up to the present. I'm reminded of how important it is to look children in the eye when you talk to them and to really pay attention because they know so well when you're faking it, and they feel it. We don't lose that hunger as we "grow up." We still feel it when people look through us or around us. I guess one of my goals from all this study and work is to keep reminding myself of the results of not giving people the attention and respect they need whenever its humanly possible. It's the gift that keeps on giving, as they say.