Musings on The School Run: Perspective

This morning, guys, my son hugged and kissed me, whispered in my ear, I love you, and then hoisted his bag onto his back and disappeared behind the school gate.

We're back to school, and so, my schedule as a blogger is gonna change as I expect that my days will now be filled with homework and art and craft and tons of revision, grocery shopping, house chores, and I'd still have to find some time in the midst of an otherwise busy day to find my center and practice a few moments of meditation. That said, I love you guys and I love it here, so I'll try as best as I can to make it work.

Today, for my blog, I'd just like to take you for a moment on the school run with me and we'd share some thoughts along the way.

In my country, it's the first day of live school for my son and the other children in his class since the COVID 19 pandemic saw the closure of all schools leading to a near academic crisis in 2020.

My son was five years old and still counted among the infants of his school, just adjusting to an entire school day away from parents when the pandemic hit. This morning, therefore, he was both excited and nervous. It was his first day of big school all over again. The result: he was irritable. He complained about the fit of his shoe, the size of his shirt, the weight of his bag, his spending money. And when he was scolded by his older brother for complaining too much, he burst into tears.

"I was just asking a question," he said, shoulders heaving. I understood his anxiety and I wanted to hug him. At the same time, I also understand that he has to overcome this hurdle. The prickly approach could drive a lot of people away who do not understand it, and the thing is, harsh reality though it may be, many people won't feel like they have to understand an individual's tics. So he's gonna have to learn to manage his anxiety in a healthier way and I'm gonna have to walk him through it, incidentally while also struggling with anxieties myself.

The moment was tense in the car for a bit, but by the time we approached my son's school, he was on the edge of his seat and ready to run in and meet his friends. And you may wonder, my friends, why I shared this detailed story about my son's return to school and my thoughts about his emotions and perspective. Well, the thing is, as my son disappeared into school, one of hundreds of children returning to fraternize with their peers, I started to think about it in a different context. I started to think that...

The world around you can be really big when you're small.

Do you guys remember when your primary school was really huge? I'm not necessarily talking about the size of the building, though for many, that is a factor as well. I'm talking about the classrooms and the blackboards. I'm talking about the tiny benches and tables where, if you were to return to your school today and attempt to sit on an infant chair, it'd likely break, or you'd hardly be able to squeeze into a seat, or your knee would hit you in the face.

It's funny how tiny all of this would seem to you today, but when you were a kid walking into school for the first time, hands clutching your parents', heart racing, staring at a strange classroom with strange children and a strange teacher, hearing all the noises, this would have been a really huge world for you.

Eventually, of course, you would have fit into that world. You'd have grown accustomed to the pencil shavings and chalk dust and the scent of stale lunches and bodies after playtime. You'd probably have made your first friends outside of your family's social circle. The huge and strange world would have become yours and you would have fit into it.

We grow to fit our worlds.

Secondary school was another world altogether, right? Do you remember those days?

By the way, did you have to take an exam to progress from your primary school? In my country, we did, and if your parents were not wealthy or connected, it was really competitive to be selected for one of the premier secondary schools.

Nonetheless, whichever secondary school you attended, the culture in secondary school was different to primary school life. The building or buildings were bigger, there were myriad classrooms, and the structure of our lessons and the teachers who came and delivered those lessons were all different.

Then, with time, you'd have grown to fit this world too, until it was time to leave for college.

These are my amazing sponsors, each of them wonderful people with amazing stories 
to tell. Please visit them, guys, and show them some love.

One's perspective shifts as one grows older, and so too does one's reactions.

In college, there's not just classrooms but departments and campuses and entire communities. Your lecturers aren't teachers, they're professors, and your lectures aren't in classrooms, they're in campus halls where you're lost in a sea of faces.

You can't expect a lecturer to hold your hand and help you shape letters like a primary school teacher would either.

And then you get your degree, head out into the world of work, land a job and you're back in a small room of maybe two to ten people, and you can't possibly bring yourself to think of what it would be like to sit again in a classroom, one in a sea of faces, waiting on a lecture or a class lesson.

As I pull away from my son's school, I think of these different perspectives. To my son, his world is huge and intimidating. To me, his world is small and intimate. I can't possibly imagine myself in such a tiny world, he can hardly imagine mine. Somewhere in the world, guys, there are people who would look at my world and think of it as really tiny as well, think of my perspective as maybe sheltered. We all have different points of view, different perspectives, different ways we experience the world at different times and in different spaces.

And right there, as I prepared to turn onto the main road leading away from my son's school, I lost my train of thought for a bit.

The driver on the main road had the right of way, and I was trying to blend in. He paused and flashed his lights, giving me the room to ease out into mainstream traffic and allowing me to blend in with stream of cars whizzing by.

I signalled my thanks and I thought for a bit, even though we see things in different ways, even though we have different perspectives, wouldn't it be nice if we, sitting in the driver's seat of our respective lives, sometimes pause and show courtesy to the other driver trying to get onto mainstream traffic, trying to blend in with the stream of cars, trying to experience the world in a different way as he or she learns to navigate the causeway where we have the right of way?

Well, my friends, I do have random thoughts in the car, don't I? How was your day?