I am here to admit that I am a high school drop out. I used to feel shameful or guilty for being different, for not fitting into the mold of the typical “good kid” in grade and high school. School never made sense to me and the information seemed irrelevant to the reality I was perceiving on a daily basis. I felt misplaced and lost. Constantly being reprimanded by my teachers. I felt like a bad kid or a bad person, constantly falling asleep in class because of staying up late doing my own research into the spirit realm or doing some sort of creative project. I barely passed my classes not because I wasn’t smart enough to understand but because it just didn’t seem to have a broad scope. Now I could put on a whole lecture about the biological processes of the human body, ancient history, herbal healing, nourishing spirit and Quantum Physics, all from my own personal research no degree needed. I was not able to stick with the curriculum because my heart knew there was something so much bigger that was not being taught to me.
I feel that teachers are so underpaid and also not taught to emotionally connect with students (not talking about all teachers but the majority). We (as a society whether young or old) are not taught about emotional intelligence or how to cope and process emotions. Which to a growing sensitive teenager with a pubescent chemical cocktail is a volatile situation. All we need to do is look at the growing number of depressed individuals and suicide rates among teens to get the picture. Most teachers have way too big of class rooms to even connect with even half of the students, are under paid, and not to mention most likely have an over worked partner. This leaves no room for emotional nourishment for these teachers or people who are fostering the shaping of young minds and this trickles down to the students. Students are not taught key information that leaves the adult world numb and without connection to any sort of tribe. Most children have their over worked parents, their over worked teachers and their emotionally fried friends to lean on and no one is even able to foster a healthy relationship to real moving emotions because no one is being allowed to do it.
I saw this circle and ran away. I ran as fast as I could, until the only thing I could do was face all of it because in the end you can not run away from yourself. In that process, I have realised that I am actually the healthy, normal one. That I still feel my heart and the world around me like a child does. That so many others have just forgotten what this even feels like because the world’s model is based around separation and empty achieved goals. No one is being told that once you get the gold, it is just an object, that this separation, lack of community and status chasing leaves you empty. And most every one feels empty in the process of striving to that goal hoping that once the goal is achieved things will all change but this is just a story. The only happiness we will ever receive is if we work on being happy and grateful now which we don’t learn in school (or most mainstream schools for that matter).
I am lucky enough to have a community of people who are amazing with good connections to their hearts, their community and because of that have opted out of this cycle. I am so thankful for that support, for that kind of tribe. I now can say after years of comparing myself to other students when I was one and to other parents for so long; that what I do for my son with special needs is enough. That my only form of measure of whether my child is doing well, is not just some sticker on some chart in someone’s classroom or an A+ on an English paper or Science project but whether or not his heart is full of joy and passion for life!
May we all come to this place of connection to our hearts and our community again, we are one