The girls snickered, trying to cover their laughs with their hands, but their eyes were cast in my direction and their fingers pointed right at me. I can’t be certain, but I think they were making fun of me.
Maybe I was imagining it, though. Sometimes in the midst of my workday, my own middle school experience follows me through the hallways and even though the middle school I attended as a student is hundreds of miles from the one I attend as a staff member, the memories are like shadows and I’m aware of their presence.
Their teasing would have been justified. I was wearing Christmas socks pulled up partway to my knees over top of my jeans and it was the exact look I was going for on a holiday accessory day. How else were people going to see my socks if I didn’t wear them OVER my pants?
The whispers and pointing–if it was directed at me–didn’t bother me. Much. (I mean it will always sting a little.) Mostly it just reminded me that my aim in life these days is to bring my whole true self to everything I do.
That doesn’t always make people comfortable.
I wanted to pull the girls aside and tell them that someday I hoped they would have the courage to be who they are no matter what people think and to accept others who are living their true lives. But I know those lessons can’t always be taught with words. More often they are caught through experience and maturity.
Sometimes, I want to pull myself aside and say those things, too.
While some people seem to have an ability early in life to be their true whole selves in any circumstance, me, I’ve been a shape-shifter for most of my life. Depending on the group I’m in/with, I’ve tried to adopt whatever persona I needed to survive. Sometimes that included being more “Christian” than I was. Sometimes it meant being less. I wanted to be accepted by everyone and I thought I needed to conform to others’ ideals and expectations.
I remember a time in college (stop me if I’ve told you this story before) when a bunch of us were sitting around in a dorm room talking about our favorite movies and every movie that someone mentioned, I chimed in with “that’s the best!” For every. single. movie. Someone finally called me out on it. “You’ve said that about every movie! They can’t all be the best!”
It’s true. I probably didn’t even like half the movies mentioned much less consider them “the best.” But I was too afraid to have my own opinion. Too afraid I’d be rejected for it. And I was totally clueless about who I was as a person.
These days, I find myself more at ease with myself. I am equally comfortable with those who profess the same faith I do and with those who do not, without a need to downplay either. I have questions. And convictions. This is who I am.
And I’m more likely to express myself creatively, even if it’s a little bit goofy.
One time when I was in middle school (as a student), I wore a pair battery-operated earrings–each one was a triangle with a couple of red lights that blinked. I was the kind of middle schooler who wanted to blend in and fly under the radar so WHY ON EARTH DID I WEAR THESE EARRINGS? They were hard not to notice, and I was noticed. Perhaps I was testing the waters letting only a small part of my true self out into the world. I cared deeply what people thought, and every dress-up day in middle school and high school was a point of stress for me. How do I look cool while I’m participating in crazy hair day?
The same fears taunt me as an adult working in a middle school. We often have special dress up days and when I’m planning my outfit, I still have a sense of unease. I worry that I’ll have the wrong day or my outfit will be too distracting, but mostly I just go with it and decide to have fun no matter what. And I always find that my coworkers are participating in the fun, too and most of the students won’t admit that an adult did something cool anyway. I embrace the spirit of showing them what it means to be yourself and have fun and sometimes look like a fool. (Remember the Smarty Pants incident of Halloween? I’ll never forget it.)
Know what you’re about
“We’ll be selling subs to raise funds for our program costs.”
The email struck fear in my heart.
I remember as a kid how the order forms and fundraisers would drench me in dread. Going door-to-door, asking our neighbors if they wanted to buy Girl Scout cookies or wrapping paper or popcorn or whatever was never on my list of favorite things to do. Our kids haven’t had the same kinds of pressures I remember from my childhood. There are the occasional ones but maybe the kind of world we live in now isn’t as conducive to the “ask-your-family-and-friends” kind of fundraisers of the past.
I had almost forgotten they existed. And then the order form came home, along with a “goal” for each student. (I should mention that this is for an extracurricular activity which costs us nothing up front.) The goal expectation had me hyperventilating. I could not for the life of me imagine us selling that number of items. So I calculated the cost to just write a check for an equivalent amount and immediately I felt better. I think I would have rather paid a registration fee for this activity than have to sell anything.
Because I am not good at selling, and I know this.
To sell, you have to be convincing and confident and sometimes I am one of those things, but I’m never going to push someone to buy something, especially if I’m not sure they need it. Not even if it’s a book I wrote, which I hope is something I will do more of in the future.
In this particular case, our family is not in a position to ask all our family and friends to buy a perishable item because so many of them live 800 miles away, and everyone and their brother locally has a fundraiser of some kind. We can’t support all the ones we’ve encountered, and I cannot expect others to support ours. When I think about putting effort into selling, a generic Facebook post that a few people might see is the most I’m willing to put into it.
The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized it’s possible we will sell a few of these items, even if it’s just for us. They’re sandwiches and we need to eat. But I’ve still given myself permission to write the check and be done with it.
This is what works for our family, and I’m no longer willing to cave to outside expectations. I also know that it does not work for us to be busy every single night of the week. Adding one after school activity per child maximum is about the limit of our involvement. More than that, and I feel out of control, like we’re always in a rush. I need more margin to be healthy and whole. Even adding extracurriculars at all is a big step for me personally. If I had my way, every day would be the same as far as schedule goes and we would never deviate from that. But my kids are too active for that to be the way of things. They need time in groups and away from each other.
It’s hard, though, to follow the path you’ve set out for your family (or yourself) and not go along with every expectation and invitation. And for me, it’s hard to keep myself from sounding judgmental when I draw a line where our family is concerned.
It’s even harder when I have to do it for myself.
At least when it’s for my family, I can pass off some of the blame. “It’s for the kids” or “because of Phil’s work schedule.”
It’s harder to be confident about the decisions that only affect me and my time. (Although let’s be honest, what affects me affects my family because we are all in this together.)
It is no small thing to say these words: I know what I’m about.
I know what works for me. I’m learning, anyway, what I’m capable of, where my strengths lie, where my weaknesses pop up. This is not to say that I can’t be stretched or that I should never do anything outside of my capabilities. I need to do this to grow. But I’m trying to make the majority of my choices with the consideration of what I’m about and what I’m not about. (This latter thing is sometimes harder to discover than the former.)
Why is it so hard to ask for help?
I have a college degree and a decade of professional experience in my field as well as another decade of at-home learning. I am confident in certain abilities related to writing.
I have one year of experience to my credit at my part-time job at the school. And in the last few weeks, I’ve found myself asking for help more than I have since my first weeks on the job. On the one hand, I feel kind of bad about this. Like, shouldn’t I know my job better by now? Shouldn’t I be able to solve every problem I’m faced with during a school day?
On the other hand, I know I’ve asked for help from people with more training and more experience in education, and there is nothing wrong with that. I’ve actually felt really satisfied watching them solve a problem, and I’ve learned something new from them about how to do it better or different the next time. I keep telling myself this is okay, and it’s necessary, although when students ask me a question and I have to say, “I don’t know” because I’m not the person with years of education, training, and experience in that particular subject, I still feel a little bit unskilled.
Sometimes I still want to have all the answers and solve every problem. And when I can’t, I begin to doubt my worth to that particular team/group/task.
But “I don’t know” is not a phrase to be avoided. Neither is “I need help.”
Who else can you be but yourself?
“You can’t be good at everything” is something we have told our kids. We also try to celebrate the things they are good at or what makes them their unique human selves.
One night recently, our daughter was struggling through her math homework. There was more of it than usual because she had had her band lesson during math class. If she had been in class, some of her homework would have been done then. The math homework that night was causing enough frustration that I could have said, “Well, I guess we’re done with band now.” Except our daughter loves band. And learning to play the flute has been a necessary creative outlet for her. I believe math is important but not at the expense of band. So, we worked through the problems together.
Our daughter might never be a math whiz, and that’s okay. She’s only 10, so it’s still unclear what she will become. And we try to encourage her interests, especially when they aren’t the same as ours.
Like art and drawing and sewing. Just tonight, she was making a small gift for her teachers–and she was sewing it herself.
I try to do this with my students, too. Their school experience is different from mine, so I work to find ways to praise their unique contributions to the world. For some it is art or design or machinery. We reward kindness and loyalty and honesty as well as completed assignments and grades. We acknowledge effort to work through something hard. (I’m writing this as a message to myself. It is so easy to be constantly critiquing behavior and performance.)
Some of us have easily identifiable strengths and sometimes that discourages others from trying to find theirs. What we don’t always see are the weaknesses. What we don’t always show are the weaknesses. We do not have to be all things to all people nor can we be. It is enough just to be ourselves. Which means we have to take the time to know ourselves, too.
It is a lifelong learning process but when we free ourselves from the expectations that we have to do or be something we’re not, the world opens up because we can do and be what we’re meant to. We can give our energy to our unique place in the world and let others give theirs.
And wherever you are in life, you can start now.
Be you. Know what you’re about. And what you’re not about. Bring your whole self to the world right where you are.
