Short one today. Not because I'm stuck for ideas again, but more because I feel like I've arrived at a sort of wrap-up. I wrote awhile back that the inertia of life had become an unofficial theme running through a lot of these Month of May posts. A lot also came up about teaching and school. This wasn't a surprise because those themes have been recurring often enough on "Summer Vacation" to merit their own label. While trying to put together the ideas I wanted to write about tonight, I began to see intersection points between those ideas.
The Inertia of Life came up as a way of describing how easy it can be to fall into a habit or routine, and how that routine can go on long enough to someday become a defining characteristic. That isn't always a great thing if these routines get in the way of the kind of progress a person might hope to achieve.
But if inertia is defined by a tendency to remain unchanged, I think a state of progress can exist that takes place over such a long period of time it's possible the small changes always taking place can go unnoticed. It's easy for me to think, "Well, I've been teaching this grade for this many years and everything just falls into the same routine after all that time." But that isn't really true. Just in the past few years my school has experienced nothing less than a complete redefinition, and while a lot of the familiar anchors and surroundings remain in place, over time they either move on, fade away or evolve into something new. It puts me in mind of some more words from the great Canadian poet Neil Peart, who once wrote:
"Summer's going fast, nights growing colder
Children growing up, old friends growing older
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each sensation a little bit stronger
Experience slips away
Experience slips away...
The innocence slips away."
Time does not stand still. Life does not stand still, even if sometimes it feels like it does. We're always living in the good old days one way or another whether we realize it or not. We're always composing the footnotes we'll refer to in the future. We all struggle in some way to reconcile the life we lead with the ideal we may not have achieved yet. And we're always planting seeds. It's just that sometimes you don't realize the seeds have grown and matured into trees until you notice how they've grown to tower above you.
Okay. And that's Day 30. One more of these tomorrow and then I'm going to drop off the face of the Earth for awhile....
