I've been asked recently why I haven't been keeping up with my blog, sharing details of my adventures teaching fourth grade in Baton Rouge. This blog began as a place for me to share stories from my adventures, and this experience certainly falls in that category. But the truth is it is easy to write about my life when I'm wandering around Spain building cactus gardens with one-eyed nudists and harvesting grapes from a vineyard overlooking ancient castles. It's not as easy to write about my life when I cried in the bathroom of the teacher's lounge three times last week. It's not easy to write about my life when eight of my kids scored "unsatisfactory" on their midyear standardized test and I flat-out failed several categories in my teacher observations.
My responses to "how do you like teaching?" have become sugar-coated (typically in an attempt to avoid the subject), but here's the truth:
It's been a steep learning curve is a euphemism for I pretty much hate my life six days a week.
I'm okay is a euphemism for I cried twice today and it's only noon.
I love them but they keep me on my toes is a euphemism for one of those little #@%$s filled the pencil sharpener with hand sanitizer and put glue in Porche's hair.
Why do we have such a hard time talking about failure?
A theater friend once offered an astute analogy: we compare our backstage to everyone else's final production. Backstage is messy. It's full of stage fright, forgotten lines, damaged props, and costume malfunctions. It's full of... failure. Mini failures that are so completely normal we really shouldn't think of them as failure. The backstage mess is just the human experience.
Social media is a platform for the final production. It's the place where we share the parts of our lives
that we want other people to see, typically because it feeds our ego. Every "like" we receive stimulates a surge of dopamine to the brain-- the same neurotransmitter that smokers, alcoholics, and gambling addicts reap from their favored coup de grace. But it's ultimately a facade. We post the pictures where we look like a model, not the ones where we have a double chin and a huge zit on our forehead. We post about the exciting new job offer, not the grad school rejection letters. We post about the nights we spend sipping blackberry-gin cocktails, not the nights we spend anxiously scrolling through Facebook in existential panic that we should be doing something "more" with our lives by now. (I'm guilty of all of these.) We've normalized a facade of reality that prompts us scrutinize our backstage mess with shame and confusion. Maybe that's why we don't talk about failure-- because somewhere along the line we've started to believe that the mess is abnormal.
There is a yoga pose called Parsva Bhuja Dandasana, or dragonfly, which entails balancing on one's hands with one foot propped up on the forearm and the other leg stretched out beside you, hovering above the ground.
It's hard.
It's also become an aspirational pose of mine for the last few months, as I've gotten deeper into regular yoga practice (which is pretty much the only reason I haven't suffered an actual mental breakdown.) I was caught off guard one day by the slightly sardonic comments of a substitute instructor who claimed that her class wasn't about "Cirque du soleil yoga". I indignantly thought of dragonfly pose. If authentic yoga practice is not about showing off, how did we end up with so many seemingly exhibitionist poses?
I read somewhere that the purpose of meditation is not to become a good meditator, but to become aware of our thoughts and emotions during meditation so that we may be aware of our thoughts and emotions in real life. It struck me that yoga is the same. The purpose of yoga is not to become "good at yoga", rather to put our bodies into situations where we are likely to experience pain, discomfort, frustration, fear, impatience, pride, shame--emotions we often associate with failure-- and give us the opportunity to acknowledge and release these emotions so that we may acknowledge and release them in real life.
Eventually we become comfortable enough with down-dog and tree pose that we cease to grow, mentally or physically. The purpose of poses like dragonfly is to once again put us face-to-face with pain, discomfort, fear of falling on our face, and the ego that threatens to turn us into show-offs. Our reaction to these experiences, and our reaction to our reaction, determines our progress. Do we judge ourselves for realizing that we're feeling prideful? Do we feel shame when we fail to stay present with our breath, or fail to reach a pose as gracefully as our neighbors? Do we judge ourselves for the mess, or do we lovingly embrace it as part of our humanity?
I've been reading a book by a Buddhist nun called "When Things Fall Apart," in which she offers wonderful advice on dealing with "hard stuff".
One of my favorite passages so far says this:
"Well-being of mind is like a mountain lake without ripples. When the lake has no ripples, everything in the lake can be seen. When the water is all churned up, nothing can be seen. The still lake without ripples is an image of our minds at ease, so full of unlimited friendliness for all the junk at the bottom of the lake that we don't need to churn up the waters just to avoid looking at what's there."
In the hardest months of teaching I sought every distraction, every comfort, every anesthetic I could find. At first it was wine, until I realized I couldn't finish lesson plans when I was sleepy. So I turned to social media, mindlessly scrolling, stalking past love interests, agreeing to dates with random guys in whom I had little genuine interest. In times of rest I filled my head with mental clutter, obsessively replaying nostalgic and imaginary scenes-- grasping at any comforting thought to distract from the discomfort of my reality-- the reality that for once in my life, something wasn't coming easily.
The junk at the bottom of my lake was shame at receiving low marks, jealously towards those who I perceive to be doing better (whether or not they actually are), anxiety about never feeling fully prepared, guilt that my kids deserve a better teacher, frustration at things not getting easy quickly enough, blame towards Teach for America for the perception that they didn't prepare me well enough, loneliness from being away from close friends and ending a relationship... I finally wrote out a list and it was all there, almost every negative emotion I could think of, lumped under that umbrella sensation of failure, mess.
The reality is that the junk in the bottom of our lakes isn't going anywhere. The mess exists for all of us, and no amount of therapy or self-help books is ever going to abolish anger, fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, jealousy, frustration, or loneliness from our hearts. We can stir up the mud and live in fear of our raw humanity, believing that our mess is abnormal, or we can let the water settle, examine the junk with kindness and curiosity, and learn to love every dead fish, rusted can, and floating plastic bag, so that it may humble us, soften us, and bring us closer to compassion and empathy for every other human on earth (and the junk in their lake.) It's not about finding stability, rather making peace with instability. Instability, discomfort, impermanence-- these are all part of the human experience, the unavoidable yin to life's yang. We can't get rid of them, but by getting to know them they become less intimidating.
There is a story that Chodron told in a commencement speech at Naropa University (which is now part of a book called Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better), that I'll leave you with.
In the story a monk comes to a guru asking for advice about how to continue after feeling like his life has hit rock bottom.
The guru says, "Well, it’s a lot like walking into the ocean, and a big wave comes and knocks you over. And you find yourself lying on the bottom with sand in your nose and in your mouth. And you are lying there, and you have a choice. You can either lie there and die, or you can run away, or you can stand up and start to keep walking out to sea. If you can choose to stand up and start walking, after a while another big wave will come and knock you down. You find yourself at the bottom of the ocean and again you have the choice to lie there or to stand up and face the waves. So the waves keep coming, and you keep cultivating your courage and bravery and sense of humor to relate to this situation of the waves, and you keep getting up and going forward. After a while, it will begin to seem to you that the waves are getting smaller and smaller. The waves won't stop coming, but after a while they won’t knock you over anymore.”
I still can't hit dragonfly pose. In fact the last time I tried it I fell on my face. But every time I try, I feel a little less fear. My muscles stretch just a bit further than they did the last time. I've realized that success isn't hitting the pose, it's finding the grace and strength to continuously fail and still return to the mat with love and an open heart. Success is also that I haven't quit my job and will return to work next week, head held high. I'm still anxious, frustrated, lonely, and uncomfortable. But I'm learning to make peace with those things.
Namaste, and happy new year.
Dana
