Hang in there!

Dear diary,

   I probably told you this before, but now and then I keep having a deep sense of helplessness when I'm at work. I realized that my first year in the kindergarten was very different to this one (the third). Back then I was full of desire, hope and will to change the world/the kindergarten into a better place and help all the needy kids. Now I know I can actually change only 1% of what I wanted back then and that makes me feel really useless sometimes. 

   It's hard to see yourself willing to help but facing the resistance of the parents who don't want to cooperate or are absolutely convinced that their kids are perfectly fine. Just as tough is to see how many kids have permissive parents who let them have everything they want without any rule or boundary. So then, when they come to the kindergarten we face really difficult kids who don't want to obey you at all and who always do the opposite of what they're told. I know, you might say we don't know how to act properly, but believe me, we've tried EVERYTHING and sometimes, in days like this you just collapse. 

   And little by little, I started resembling some of my fellow coworkers' way of thinking. They left the educational system in favor of opening their own private practice because they realized that working in a kindergarten or school doesn't bring you the satisfaction you wished for at first. I don't seriously consider leaving the system yet, but it's funny how in the first year I wouldn't understand them, and now I feel exactly the same. It's very, very tough to be a psychologist that isn't listened to and even harder to be a teacher. It takes all the patience you have and a great deal of work done with yourself in lowering your expectations regarding the kids and their families. 

    But then again, there are days like TODAY, when everything went smoothly. I had great activities with the kids, they were all very involved, willing to cooperate and full of love and for a second there I thought that I might not be changing the whole world, but 1% is a good start.

   So, there you have it. My huge smile today from morning to evening, everywhere I went. I really had a great day and I needed to remind myself that I should hang in there because life has its ups and downs and we all have good days and bad days and I should just keep doing what I love without expecting so much from myself or... the world :)

   By the way, Oliver and I are moving in together this weekend and I've been packing my stuff for a month now. I never believed I own SO MANY THINGS and SO MANY BOOKS. It's all very exciting and I can't wait to tell you all about the move and what comes after :)

Still smiling,

D.

Day 329. Passengers

   We're all passengers on this planet. We don't know where we come from, where we're going or why we're here. We spend a lifetime trying to figure that out and some of us never do. Because most of the time we're so caught up in the web we create with everything we hear, everything we want and everything we can't achieve. 

   We're passengers that are brought up to obey. Obey the rules, obey the laws, obey older people who supposedly have a vast life experience. But they never think that we might want to act differently and write our own life motto instead of borrowing it from elders around us.

   We're passengers who influence one another without meaning to. Because in the end we're a bunch of cells who know how to multiply but don't know who they are or what love is. So we try to figure that out and it's taking us a while. We fall for the wrong people and we know it but we can't help it. We want to be accepted and validated so we change a bit for every group we want to belong to. We want to believe we're independent and we don't care about anything, but at the end of the day we all do. We care about our own good.

   We're passengers who like to think they're unique, but we're born to be the same. We all go through the same phases. It's our wild nature that sets us apart. Some follow it while others suppress it and go on obeying the rules. The same rules that are going to drive them nuts and make them question the purpose of life after so many failures. We, the others, decide we want to make our own rules. We have no idea why we're here but we do know that this is everything we've got for now. So we wanna live it all and enjoy it fully so that whenever the end is coming we can all claim: I've lived it all!

   We're all passengers who try to find the key to the universe. Some find it in art, others in science and others in religion. In the end, it doesn't even matter, as long as we're not staying idle:)