Teaching and Life

They say there are two types of people who become teachers. There are those who liked school and don't want to leave it. Then there are those people who hated school but figured the best way to change the system they hated was to do it from the inside.

I have never really been sure which one I am. I am always fighting for a change. I want there to be more power in the hands of the poor, the downtrodden, the unlucky. I want education to be the doorway to a better life for more people. I want more people to realize that they can do better than they are doing. I want the gap between the rich and middle class, and the poor to shrink. I want to make people smile and discover that their child who they thought was lazy or stupid is actually a brilliant actor, poet, essayist, or has a brilliant way of analyzing literature. There are a million ways that the world is wrong. And I feel like I could have an effect. I could change it. That is why I am a teacher.

I neither hated or loved school. I went because I saw it as an opportunity to be somebody. To recreate myself in another lifestyle. To escape from where I lived. School was there to lead me to where I wanted to go.

I have been thinking lately that life seems like a waste of time. I have been thinking that maybe everything is pointless because even if I do cause a change I probably won't get to see it and live it simply because of the nature of change. I heard today from a good friend that it doesn't matter if you don't cause change. What is most important is not wasting your life. Not having a ton of regrets at the end about what you could or should have done.

She is right. I used to think that and somewhere I lost that. Life isn't about the end because we all have the same inevitable end. Insert cliche here, "Life is about the journey".