Trust

Pin It I was reading a friend’s blog this morning. I call this person a friend though we’ve never met face to face, we’ve never exchanged letters or email, and we’ve never spoken to each other.

Yet, we’re friends.

I was reading over her blog entry this morning about something.

Trust.

Belief.

Honesty.

It’s amazing to me that a blog is such a great medium. I still find myself overwhelmed from time to time by the ability individuals have to write the thoughts of their hearts and send these out to the cyber world, and then have these items found—perhaps followed—by people whom they’ve never even met.

We laugh with them.

We cheer along with them.

We cry with them.

We—in the darkness of our private sanctuaries—even get down on our knees and pray for their well-being.

We become connected.

Words and experiences can indeed be a powerful thing.

They can lift. They can build. They can inspire.

They can also destroy.

What brings this on today?

I was thinking that if I really wanted to, I could create an entire life; I could create a whole existence which simply did not exist and shuttle this off to the blogger world; but really, what would be the point?

My mom reads this.

My mom would know.

It’s interesting that there is a group of people we meet though a medium like Blogger, but we really don’t know them…sure we know parts of them…but we don’t know all of them; but then again…we shouldn’t. Nobody knows each and every part of us. Every secret longing of our hearts, every silent apprehension we hold.

No.

We are all puzzles.

The readers slowly put the pieces together along with their own experiences and ‘create’ a person on the other end of the keyboard. But in reality, we really don’t know them.

I look forward to a day when I can ‘meet’ some of my blogger friends (since I already know about 75% of them) face to face and we can—for the first time—hear each others’ voices, listen to each other laugh, and get one more piece to add to that ever-changing and complex puzzle known as…you.

The Escape

Pin It It was last weekend.

I was getting ready for Christmas in September when I found the two balloons I’d purchased for my sister’s birthday still hovering about the house. It amazed me, it was nearly two weeks after I’d purchased them; they both had life in them…life enough to still be airborne.


Well, knowing that birthday balloons were not really the style for the event we had coming up, I decided to pop them. The brightly-colored one was the first to go—after all, it was still in the kitchen and tethered to a gift bag; however, before I could get to the second balloon—the green star—my sister arrived and the balloon, somehow having gotten close to the door, made a lunge for freedom.

Needless to say, it had plenty of strength to make a quick getaway, and before I knew it, it had soared up into the heavens and soon disappeared from sight.

As I stood on the ground below, watching this balloon slowly rise higher and higher, I thought how this balloon was like—and unlike—me. I thought of those things each day I encounter which are bent on destroying my spirit.

When I say ‘spirit’ I am talking about either a destruction of self-esteem, or even an eternal soul.

The ways this destruction can come about are vast and unnumbered, and there have been many times when I find myself deflated and punctured—lying in a crumbled heap upon the floor—like balloon number one. These are usually from the times when I am clinging to people, places, or things which are unhealthy. Those things which are bent on deflating, tethering, and keeping me on the ground.

But as I watched this balloon I thought of how, if I’m really trying, I can ‘escape’ all of these things and rise above them—to a safe place where they cannot harm.

However, I have to be ready to leave them behind and rise above when the door is opened and the opportunity presents itself.

From there, I’ll let the winds carry me.

Thought of the Month

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A part of me wanted to blog tonight, but another other part wanted to finish the standards test and the class newsletter for tomorrow so that I am prepared. As a result of this, I am going to post the “thought of the month” I do for my class. After all, I did spend time writing it, right?

When I was about ten or eleven years old I did something that I shouldn’t have. What’s more, I lied to my parents about it too. When my dad found out he told me, “We’re your parents and we love you. We will always love you, but we don’t have to trust you…trust has to be earned and right now, you’ve lost that trust.” I can still remember the disappointment on my dad’s face and realizing that I had let him down. I hated that feeling. I felt like my dad would never believe in me again and it felt awful—it was like a million snakes were all coiling around in my stomach.

I never thought that I could feel a worse feeling than on that day, that is, until I became a schoolteacher. I’ve been working with kids for a many years now and my experiences with my students are some of my greatest joys and worst sorrows; my students have made me laugh, think, and even cry sometimes. Every student that has walked through my classroom door at the start of the school year has always been given my full trust; I believe in them, no matter what I’ve heard from others about them. We talk about new beginnings the first day of school and growing and blossoming into something maybe better than they already are. We talk about becoming the people we want to be. Yet, even with this, I have had students who have chosen to violate that trust. Some do it in the form of stealing from me or other students, cheating on homework or tests, or just flat-out lying. This hurts the student, but it also hurts me too.

I never realized just how much my actions as a ten year-old affected my dad until I became a grown-up and had students to teach. It seems that every year I have at least one or two students who take the trust that I’ve freely given to them and throw it away, like a worn-out scrap of paper. When I have students who are dishonest with me I feel awful inside. I want to trust them, I want to believe them, but when they take what I’ve given to them and violate it, that trust is gone and who knows when this can be earned back.

So what can a student do who has been dishonest in the past? One who has lost the confidence of those around them? Well, the answer is simple. Stop. Stop what it is that you’re doing, make a course change, and do what you KNOW is right from this time forward. I shudder to think what direction my life could have gone if I hadn’t had people in my growing up who loved me enough to correct me when I was making mistakes or pursuing choices that led to bumpy roads.

I recently called my dad about this and thanked him; I thanked him for how strict he was with me and how he made me earn his trust back. I’ve done much better in my life since that time and when I remember back to when I was a ten year-old boy, I am grateful for someone in my life who didn’t let me get away with something that simply wasn’t right. I am grateful for my dad who taught me through a very hard lesson to always be the kind of person that people can depend on and believe in, no matter what.