“I don’t know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘well, if I’d known better I’d have done better,’ that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m sorry.’ If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that’s rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don’t have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.” Maya Angelou
There are so many interactions and moments through a day working in school, it is rare I don’t go home without at least one regret. This has been particularly heart wrenching when I see myself act on unchecked assumptions, when I try to step back from my privileges to allow room, when I struggle to find a place to stand amidst growing pressures for test based standardized school life.
If we can follow Ms. Angelou’s advice, perhaps we will be stronger to carry on the daily work with our students and colleagues. For sure, it would be good to model this kind of acceptance of our striving and our imperfection. Recognizing and accepting what I wish I had done differently rather than beating myself up or wallowing in feeling bad about myself….I am in a stronger more hopeful state of being to grow and do better next time.
My friend has said to me many times, “If you don’t stop beating yourself up, we’re going to have to take out a restraining order on yourself.”
Margie, your words ring true yet again. During this respite from the school year, with time to reflect on the relationships I have or haven’t built over the past year, I’m even more aware of the need to be kind to ourselves and others. Does Maya Angelou ever fail to enrich us and challenge us go reexamine our thinking?
Having just completed the Capital District Writing Project–a transformative experience–I’m rethinking what it means to “teach” writing, how thinking of writing as a way of being, for us and even our littlest ones, informs how we share the act with students, and how there is still room for skills instruction–within a meaningful context. I feel the need to be kind with myself, regretting some of my participation in the skills for skills sake culture and looking ahead with new focus. Thanks for this reminder, my wise friend.
Casey
Did you see The Writing Assignment That Changes Lives? (from NPREd or my post Summer Dreams has a link to it).
We’re talking about creating a writing program drawn from that idea for Advisory in our middle/high school–maybe for elementary down the street 🙂