Falling From Above

I’ve been depressed. It’s everything and nothing, as it often is, but I’m starting to have a physical aversion to some of my students.

I’m responsible for a group, technically for the next four years but I’m scrabbling to get out of it and start again with another group next year. They’re mostly good at school, with good grades, but there are some elements of the class who are just the sort of kids that I have a hard time with: snippy, egotistical, mean, dishonest. That’s a group dynamic, but among the individuals there are a few who are bitchy, whiny, and lazy, everything is always the fault of someone else. Then there’s the usual things of kids everywhere: unable to concentrate or follow through with things. I don’t mind the “normal” kid stuff, but I have a hard times with the mean ones and the dishonest ones. Those two things are the worst for me.

I’ve been trying to work on myself to accept them, but it’s not going very well. Yet. I’ll figure it out.

I’ve been going through my list of things that improve my mood (exercise, enough sleep, cutting out alcohol, watching things that make me laugh, music) and I ran across an old Neil Young song “Falling From Above”. The lines “A little love and affection in everything you do will make the world a better place with or without you.”

That I can work towards. A little love and affection, even with the mean ones, even with the dishonest ones. I can intellectually understand that they are unhappy and suffering, from teenage woes and other, bigger, life woes. I’m working my compassion muscles. I’ll get there. I have Foro.