I played tennis today for the first time in three months. It was superb. I've forgotten how much I love running around hitting a bouncy yellow ball across a net for no apparent reason. I know quite a few teachers prefer to recommend team sports, like soccer and basketball, rather than "isolating" sports like swimming or tennis. I, however, don't really see the difference. I also think it really depends on the kid. Some kids do better in sports where they mainly rely on themselves to get the game going.
I caught up with the cool retired ladies that I usually play tennis with. By the way, when I'm retired - and I will totally be retired. I used to think that I won't ever want to be retired, I enjoy being busy and working all the time. But I've learned that I like being busy on my terms, at least for the majority of the time. Busyness on someone else's terms is pretty much inevitable. When I'm retired, I want to be like these ladies. They bike and run and play golf and tennis and volunteer in the community and spend time with family and friends and are engaged as much, if not more so, as non-retired people. Actually, it's safe to say that they are more engaged in life much more than the average non-retired person. It's awesome.
Anyway, one of the ladies' husband was recently diagnosed with cancer. He's getting treatment and seems to be doing well considering. And she's doing well too, with the stress and the worry. Of course she has to cut back on some things to go with her husband to the doctor and such, but she can laugh and play tennis and be concerned with others when they are going through a rough time too (namely, me).
Which led to me thinking. Lately, my thinking has generated nothing but lists and today is not exception:
Things that are higher on the cosmic priority list than myself and my problems
1. The overall physical, mental, and spiritual state of mankind. I'm not the only one with problems. Statistics will prove that I'm also not the first, nor the last, to have these life/professional issues either. This doesn't take away the fact that to me, my problems are pretty big. But it does provide some perspective.
2. The environment. Dude, a whole ice shelf broke off and fell into the ocean near Antarctica. If the earth was a human, it would be suffering of multiple diseases with a definitely NOT GOOD prognosis.
3. Things not of this world and this life. A while back, I read (or was it heard? eh, don't remember) about the near certainty that what we know and see and feel and think is just a tiny speck compared all that is possibly out there. There is no significant proof that aliens exist. But there is also no significant proof that they don't. That teeny tiny world inside every cell in your body, à la A Wrinkle In Time is a possibility because nothing says it is absolutely not a possibility. I've always wondered what it would be like to stand from God's point of view.
Tangent: I'm suddenly reminded of this quote by a rabbi that goes something like "Whenever people turn to God and cry out, 'Why are you doing these things to me, God?' I tell them that God turns back and says, 'Why are you doing these things to me, people?'" It's not the exact quote, and I get the feeling that I'll be bothered by it until I find the quote again, but that's the jist of it. And I think it sums it up pretty nicely.
One a different note, I went out to VV again today. I love this group of art kids. The class has K-5, 18 students, and responding spectacularly to my behavior management. Of course, these kids come from higher SES families and most likely have most of their structural/behavioral needs met. But even so, they can go wild. As witnessed by the group of 1st graders in the library before my class. The librarian definitely had issues controlling them.
And now I'm making myself get a puffed up head, after all those humbling revelations.
EDIT: Ok, so I was re-reading this and it dawned on me that what I wrote sounds really really really weird. As in wrapped-in-tin-foil-to-communicate-with-aliens weird. I don't "believe" in aliens or any similar thing (believe is in quotation marks because I have linguistic issues with that phrase, which is too long winded to explain here). I do think that people on this planet get to see very little of all that is around us simply because we are limited like that. It's like the ending to the Chronicles of Narnia series. The Pensieve children have explored Narnia for what amounts to years and years. Yet, when they finally *spoiler alert!* die in the train accident and return to Narnia for good, they discover many more adventures and much more land than they had previously known. I don't really like C.S. Lewis' other writings on Christianity very much (mostly because I find it dry), but his Narnia books opened my mind to weird and wonderfully wide things.
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