#Antonym of ephemeral full#
#Antonym of ephemeral series#

Then a friend recommended a book to me: “Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times,” by Katherine May. This idea - that slowing down, rather than pushing through - was the salve. And from somewhere within my body, this deep need to turn inwards came to the surface, demanded to be seen, couldn’t be silenced or deterred.

#Antonym of ephemeral series#

Instead of independent obstacles or disparate challenges, work now felt like a daily series of attempts to ram myself into a giant brick wall of inequity and ill logic - a wall that showed no signs of crumbling. Whereas before I’d viewed challenges in my work as obstacles to be overcome, doors to kick down, puzzles to solve, I found myself less and less able to muster the energy for these fights. While I’d previously found tremendous joy in my job, I now found joy more ephemeral, more elusive. It continued when the district decided to subdivide our green space away from our school for the purpose of building a fieldhouse, but did not meaningfully incorporate student or community feedback in their process. And it got even worse when we returned to school buildings in September 2020 to see that the only ventilation being provided by our school district was $19 box fans that didn’t even fit in many of the windows. It began when the Boston Public Schools attempted to close my school for no apparent reason, requiring our school community to mobilize and fight to keep it open. And then, around 2018, something started to shift.

#Antonym of ephemeral full#

It took years and substantive effort for us to impose “no school Saturdays” in our house, to guarantee ourselves at least one day when we weren’t consumed by work.įor the first 15 years of my career, this was how I functioned: at full speed, just as my immigrant parents had.

On vacations, we forced ourselves to leave town for extended periods, convinced that if we stayed in Boston we would work. Most weekends included at least one day of work. When we met for dinner in the evenings, we struggled to find energy - or even words - for one another, having exhausted most of our emotional resources on the young people in our school buildings.

Most days, mine was the only car in the parking lot when I left the building the same went for that of my partner, also a teacher. And I threw myself, and my body, into that work. There was always another lesson to plan, a paper to grade, a parent to contact. As a teacher in the Boston Public Schools, my to-do list was unending. And so, for nearly two decades, I fashioned my life and my career after my parents - I worked. Rest is not a state of being that I understood for a very long time. Through observation, I came to see rest as a privilege. They lived an extremely minortized existence, and had no safety net but for the one they were building through their constant movement.

My parents were Indian immigrants to Appalachia. In many ways, I’ve come to understand this way of living as an exercise in survival. And when they traveled, it was also in Drive mode - constant activity from early morning to late at night. When they weren’t entertaining, they were volunteering. When they weren’t gardening, they were entertaining. When they weren’t exercising, they were gardening. When they weren’t working, they were exercising. I come from a family of people who only operate in one gear, and that gear is Drive. The opposite of ephemeral pubblicata da Jacque Santos-Bay il giorno giovedì 17 marzo 2011 alle ore 10.08Īnd there she was, wasting her youth chasing the childhood she never had.A peaceful sunrise on Jamaica Pond, Jamaica Plain, MA. And through it all we can still remain ourselves, just a little wiser, just a little more resilient. We just need to accept that in life there is still a lot to learn and we are all capable of learning and adjustment. Therefore, we can take every blow, every attack, every failure, every disappointment. Yes, we can be hurt, burned, crushed and shattered but I believe our spirit is immortal, its capability is limitless. No matter how much we hurt we can always tend to our wounds and allow time and care to let them heal. No matter how much we lose we can always win.

And as foolish as I can sometimes allow myself to be, I believe life always have to go forward. I will not, I will never claim to know everything. My response to life is the little, and all that I have. But I would be lying if I'll say not a thing in the course of this life ever made me happy. And while the reality of life continues to reveal itself, it may hurt, it may shatter me into bits and may make everything fall apart. But man's instinctive response to kindness reminds me of what is real.