Oatmeal? Negative
People will take and take and use kids as bait. Not the most positive thoughts on a rainy day, but hear me out. Gather experience. Ask around.
I wrote the above when I considered what life was like in school and how so many of the teachers walked around with bags under their eyes. For one who refused to burn himself out there was often judgment, the idea that the person does not care about kids. I read recently that there is a teacher shortage. I don’t believe this. I believe there are many good teachers out in the world. I believe that I am one of them.
What I consider now is how many talents and gifts are lost upon the world in the name of automation. Who will teach children how to take a walk, how to bear witness to their surroundings? Who will teach children what grows along the sidewalk? Who will teach children that their voices should not be silenced. This I wonder.
This I consider when thinking about gardens and schools and living in a capitalist world. The person profiting from capitalism will always look for and use free labor, and there will always be somebody willing to offer their skills in the name of building the future.
What if the people doing this, myself included for many years, are undercutting those whose living might be made from skills they have spent years trying to perfect? Like the scabs who work when the union strikes.
People do what they love on the side because something within threatens and says that it cannot be done full time, that it is not safe, that the lizard brain need rest under this rock of safety where all the other lizards have gathered away from fires and teeth.
I’m here to stand before the lizard and let him know that we are safe, that there is no more cave, that shadows can guide the way. I’m here to say that thoughts of losing everything are only thoughts.
When I swim, something within reminds me that breath is the only thing that is important. When I consider eating, something within stops me from going to the grocery store because I know there is better food out there. I know somebody feeds their animals better than what is fed to the animals I will find on the shelves at Robert.
And so sometimes at night I grow hungry. Sometimes I eat an entire jar of almond butter. Sometimes I eat oatmeal in the evening even though I ate oatmeal for breakfast.
One can only eat so many guava and so much moringa in a day before more is needed. I think how next year I will plant more egyptian spinach and maybe start to eat the chickens that gather around CRISP. Yet I can’t.
Maybe I could do research on why the people of India revere the cow. I noticed no beef in Nepal, but did eat plenty of water buffalo along with crunchy chickpeas and red onions and enough peppers to kill any parasites that water buffalo might have carried when he died.
I wonder whether there are others who have difficulty walking through the grocery store, who see that most of what is on the shelves is akin to drugs, akin to a craving I know oh too well. Knowing does not make me immune. Knowing and exercising does not mean there are not times when I eat oreos and while eating the oreos know they are not food and yet continue the chewing because something in the brain wants the sugar.
There is a circle of profit, all of this tied together, all of this tied into not knowing, into any attempts at original thinking closely monitored, to medicate students who do not fit, to send home those who get so angry they cannot take another moment beneath the fluorescent white lights and chemical sprays that fill the hallways.
There is no teacher shortage. That’s my opinion. In a world of fear, those in power take a tighter grip, for fear that cannot be let go requires control. And maybe there aren’t as many in power anymore. Maybe the so-called teacher shortage is an indication of a spiritual awakening.
Maybe the schools that have already made some changes, that have gone back to creating thinkers, maybe they will be inundated with teachers. Maybe those schools will lead the way. Maybe those schools will change the world.
And maybe we all have to choose at some point whether we will be a revolutionary or an oppressor.
