This year I finished teaching at the school where I have taught for 18 years. I have grown with it, helped shape it and contributed to its development. I have connected with colleagues, students and parents. I connected most with pupils and parents at informal gatherings - picnics, camps, school trips, climbing trips that I led for well over a decade.
As much as I was often delighted by the work and creativity of the school, there were times when I was dissatisfied. I remember two occasions when I wanted to pack my bags and change schools. When I mentioned this to the headteacher at the time, she told me that it was my choice to leave or to stay and face the challenge and learn. I chose to stay. And not once. Yes, it would have been easier to leave offended, to blame others, to rehash old stories, to find excuses for leaving and to blame them. Or to leave, thinking of my own irreplaceability and comforting myself that they will be sorry and that they will have seen what it will be like without me.
When I left in June, I left without all these stories about my own irreplaceability, without any resentment. I went peacefully, completely. Nothing was left 'messy' and 'untidy', except perhaps a cupboard in the classroom. There was joy and sadness at leaving a part of life and creation behind. The hardest part was leaving the classroom that I had painted and redecorated with the students and their parents. As I emptied the walls and cupboards, I realised it was over, burst into tears and spent the next week happily and calmly saying goodbye to my colleagues. .
To be completed is to be at peace, to feel happy and whole. In wholeness and completion there is no regret, no blame. There is no reopening of old wounds and no looking for excuses or reasons.
When I am not complete, I react. I react to everything that hurts me. Usually by attacking, sometimes by blaming or insulting..
For me, being completed means: acceptance; not running away; being with what is, what we are; not blaming; not wondering why; not thinking - what if and not raising expectations; not blaming myself and others; embracing and believing that something is good for something. To believe that I am on the right path and in the right place where I am and with whom I am.
If it is completed, we can leave it behind. If it is not, it is waiting for us somewhere in life to express itself again in upset.
I have learnt this from my own experience and thanks to Landmark. So I embrace life with all that it brings. It comes with a purpose and I am grateful to be able to learn again. The greater the challenges, the greater the lessons.