Feel The Sun

By: Frank Jackson

“If you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain”

The Darkness Prevails…

These are tough times for everyone right now. Some of us struggle with the impossible balance of working fulltime in our makeshift offices while also caring for a full house. Some have lost their source of stability, routine, and peace. Others are alone. Whatever the case may be, it can be easy to become trapped under the darkness of it all. Even when the sun shines brightly through our kitchen window, the shade created by the confines of our home overpower any sense of sanity we have clung to. Our efforts are dampened by the fortified prison of thoughts. The darkness prevails.

However, often it is those very thoughts that could give us the freedom we all seek to some degree. My dad wasn’t a man of many words. He never sat me down for a talk where he lectured me with golden nuggets of wisdom that I’d one day reflect on thankfully. I was left to figure things out on my own. When he passed, I was tasked with the daunting task of cleaning his apartment. That meant clearing a lifetime's worth of things in a week, deciding what to keep and to give away. Furniture, clothes, mail, dishes, forgotten packages, gifts, memories of my childhood and his. In that, I found myself shackled by the grief of the moment. Rightfully so, I allowed the darkness to win. On the final day of this assignment, I discovered a stack of mail with scattered thoughts written all over like graffiti. He was one to hold on to all of his mail because “you never know”, so this stack was no surprise. As I shuffled through the stack to make sure nothing was of relevance to the current reality, I discovered a quote:

“If you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain”

In that moment, I learned possibly the most important lesson from my father. A soundless piece of advice that perfectly matched his style. In one of the toughest times I was mentally liberated as I hope all of us will be during this time of isolation and unknown. However large or small the troubles we face, it will not stop the rainbows that always appear. 

I hope that we don’t invalidate our experiences with comparison. However, I do hope that we all know that regardless of our circumstances we still enjoy the light. When we realize that the dark clouds don’t stop us from feeling the warmth of the sunshine, life gets a lot easier. That’s peace.

In the spirit of feeling the sunshine, here are some practices that have helped me:

1. Write down or verbalize ‘5 things’ you’re grateful for a week

2. Perform a week’s worth of random acts of kindness (maybe a surprise care package to your favorite student)

3. Spend 30-minutes outside & speak to the strangers you see along the way (no headphones)

4. Workout in any form, get those endorphins 

5. Try meditation for a week or even stretching to music (first thing in the morning or before bed)

Quarantine or not, these actions have gotten me through life. Consistently choosing to pour into myself and others with simple tasks can make a world of difference in feeling that peace we all seek. Our minds are powerful and backed up with action, we are unstoppable. So next time we feel that storm coming, look up, smile, and remember, the sun is right behind it.

“Can’t be everything for everybody” - J Cole

Written by Frank Jackson (Mr. Positive)

Prior to every takeoff, courteous flight attendants read and demonstrate important, but often overlooked safety instructions. They outline the six marked exits and proceed to communicate the worst-case scenario responsibilities for every passenger on the plane.

 “Upon the loss of cabin pressure, the panels above your seat will open, and oxygen masks will drop down. If this happens, place the mask over your nose and your mouth, and adjust it as necessary. Be sure to adjust your own mask before helping others.”

 Currently, the education plane  is two weeks into a nosedive as we struggle to deal with digital classrooms and the Rona, Miss. Rona, Corona, COVID-19 or whatever you want to call it. The oxygen masks have been deployed, literally, yet we refuse to put ours on. We can’t help but to hop onto google classroom (and all other digital platforms), ignoring the planes Wi-Fi restrictions, to recount the safety instructions for the 100+ student passengers because WE KNOW they ignored them. As we gasp for air, textbooks crash from the above overhead compartments. Our neatly placed glue sticks, journals and pencil stashes fling like knives in a tornado to the front of the plane. In the midst of the destruction, we manage to recite every word verbatim as the flight principal did. We pause, having lost track of where we are, to confirm that all of our students have their masks on and have proceeded to parachute the remaining distance to the ground. Before the last student jumps, they look at us in our eyes to ask: What were we supposed to do again? Alone and struggling to breathe, we desperately reach for our own oxygen mask but notice it has been punctured by a pair of scissors. Then, after a smooth 10 second hyperventilation our eyes open, the director yells cut and we realize the entire thing was created in our minds.

 Our experience as educators right now is similar to the emergency on the plane. Our minds have immediately shifted to the safety and well-being of our kids (rightfully so). Whether Pre-K or 12th, for 6 months, we diligently squeezed our way into our students lives. We taught them how to navigate themselves and the lives they soon will embark on, all the while attempting to impart as much academic knowledge as we can. We have pushed ourselves to the limit all year and worry that all will be undone as our kids are pushed back into their home lives indefinitely. Some of us have conjured the worst-case scenarios and are plotting CIA level plans to extract the kids from their homes and into a better life (I’ve been there). Beyond the endless streaming of Netflix and Fortnite, the Tiktoks, Takis, and of course the occasional online assignment, harsh and terrifying realities exist for our kids. But as the famous philosopher Jermaine Cole once said, “You can’t be everything for everybody”. We are not Luke Cage, Black Panther, or Storm and even they have weaknesses. Ours’ is also our biggest strength, we care.

I want to remind all of us, like flight attendants do daily: if we do not take care of ourselves, we will be unable to be everything we want to be for our kids. The same effort, attention to detail, and unmatched fight for perfection we put into our school family is required for our own lives. The oxygen will run out, our drive will get punctured, and we will ultimately be pushed out of the fight. This time away will be tough; it may very well contribute to students forgetting their annotation strategies. However, we must trust that the values and mindsets we have instilled in them have stuck. We can make ourselves available to them and their families, but we cannot put their entire well-being on our backs. Pandemic or not, it was never on any one of us to save these children or even shelter them from the harsh realities of the world. It has been and continues to be our job to educate. To educate, we must be at our best. Use this time to mend some of the holes we have put into our own oxygen tanks. Spend time with family, take daily walks, journal, have those restorative conversations with those who have hurt us. Do ALL the things we say we WOULD do if we had the time and energy. Let’s come back to our kids full, not because we have been pushed to the brink and escaped to our summer caves for hibernation. Instead, we should come back full because we used this time to become whole again. In fact, we should take some time to do the self-work to ensure our tanks never hit empty. We owe it to each child we pray about at night to take care of ourselves during this time. If we don’t, we might become the monsters we complain about.