Taking time to celebrate

It has not been my practice to post photographs of myself in this blog. I don't plan to make this a regular thing. But I am taking this moment to share a photo from my yoga teacher graduation. That's me on the right, holding my certificate, mouth open wide, singing.

I wanted to share this moment of here because I have been thinking about where I focus my time and energy.

This semester, I was lucky to teach many fabulous students in my English classes. I even got to teach some of my very favorite students for a second and third time. There were moments when I laughed so hard in class that I doubled over. Two of my all-time favorite students won major scholarships and named me as their faculty mentor. That's a lot of teaching wins!

But was this my focus? No, it was not. Instead, I spent lots and lots of time and mental and emotional energy obsessing about the one student out of the 54 students I taught this semester who was a thorn in my side.

Now that the semester is over, I realize what a bummer this is. It would have been so much more fun to focus on the other 53. I've started to realize that I and others I know have a tendency to do this. I spent so much more time analyzing an award that I didn't win than I did celebrating a recent revise and resubmit.

In a world where wins can come hard, why wouldn't we take time to savor them? What would it look like to spend as much time discussing and talking about what makes us happy or what we're grateful for as we do talking about disappointments?

So, this is a picture of me celebrating. It comes from a specific ceremony designed to recognize achievement, but it seems that many of us could do with a bit more celebration in our lives, and it may be that each of us needs to help the others around us to see what's worthy of cheer in their lives. In yoga class, we call this being a forklift.

Let's lift!

---