"Though we cannot see the heart, we can see the life." ~ David Paul Kirkpatrick
In the school setting, when someone visits your space of teaching and learning, they should immediately know the subject you are charged with instructing. For example, a literature teacher's classroom may have Shakespeare, Dickinson, and Dunbar quotes lining the walls. While in a science room, depending upon the discipline there might be a periodic table, a skeleton, a rock collection, microscopes, or a snake aquarium. The point here being that it is easy to surmise from the outside evidence the seeds of knowledge the teacher is sowing in that classroom.
"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." ~ Galatians 5:22-23
The same can be said of the spirit in which we are cloaked daily as we work. Each of us possesses a different vocational personality. Some perform well on their own, while others excel under a team based model. More often than not, we find ourselves positioned in circumstances with personalities very different from ours. As a boss, you may be an overbearing micro manager who would rather delegate for fear of taking responsibility or you may be working alongside negative absent minded individuals with far less experience than you.
If this is the work environment in which you currently find yourself, we might pause here to consider the purpose inside these sticky circumstances and the seed we are producing. If we are open, we see endless opportunity for pruning, for growth, and for sharpening of self.
Each day in our work we are called to examine the fruit we bear. None of us is perfect mind you, but when our staff and co workers think of us, consider their witness and the impressions they might share if asked.
"Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." ~ Plato
Work toward learning to "be" present in your breath. And remember, your fruit is showing.
As a personality, how do you approach challenges in the work place?
Which fruit of the spirit is most evident in you at work?
What areas in need of sharpening are being revealed to you through your interactions at work?
"Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others." ~ Virginia Woolf
As school children, we all wrote the infamous "what do you want to be when you grow up" essay. Most of our responses described what our family envisioned or the juvenile hero/heroine fantasy of following in the career footsteps of our parents.
I recall that I marveled at the speed of my mother's fingers and the ease with which she deciphered those little squigglies I later learned were shorthand. I was so impressed at her transcriptionist skills and though she was proud of her education and business training, she encouraged me to aim higher. "You have to be better than me. That's why I work so hard, so you can be better and smarter than me." Many years into my own professional experience, I finally understood what she meant.
"Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change." ~ Cassandra Clare
Little did we know as children how much our parents were juggling and sacrificing. With just 24 hours of breath, sometimes 10 to 14 of them were devoted solely to earning a living. In addition, there was bill paying and budgeting, meal planning and grocery shopping, house keeping and home repair, homework help and teacher conferences, laundry, doctor appointments, birthday parties and family time. All of which left little time for making self a priority. Yet without attention to self care, the must do lists are just dreaded chores that become impossible to manage over time.
"Where'd the days go, when all we did was play? And the stress that we were under wasn't stress at all just a run and a jump into a harmless fall." ~ Paolo Nutini
I chose a different career path and I am pleased I was given the freedom to do so. As a mother, my advice to my children will be the same I was given with one caveat.
Seek balance.
As you regroup and look forward to a new work week, reflect upon that long ago essay and the work to which you find yourself committed and consider where creating balance might be necessary.
What holds true today from your original essay?
How are you spending your 24 hours of Breath?
Are you in need of greater balance between your work and personal lives?
