Thanks again for your heartfelt, honest, and well-written sharing. If this is your last, many students will miss out on a wonderful teacher. And if it is your last, congratulations on making what must have been a hard decision.
Rick, your comments are always so lovely. This class was my last. The decision wasn't that difficult. Just a basic cost/benefit analysis, a process that I know you are intimately familiar with. I'll miss showing them an orange and blue male Mojave black-collared lizard. I'll even miss swearing when it latches onto my left index finger! But time rolls on, and different times call for different foci. The window of life is narrowing.
Sounds melancholic. Also reminds me of a story about myself. I used to take students to Costa Rica every other year (since 1991), and I kept a journal each time. One year I noticed that my previous journal had an interesting entry the first night after arriving at our San José Hotel, all in capital letters I wrote: "THIS IS THE LAST TIME! NEVER DO THIS AGAIN YOU IDIOT!!!" Then when I looked in the rest of my CR journals it turns out I wrote almost the same thing every single time! And yet, when the next odd year rolled around, there I was again, in a cheap hotel in San José, writing in my journal. So I guess it must be like giving birth. At the time, you swear it is the last time you'll go through that shit. But then... you forget how bad it was, or maybe it's just that the pleasant memories get larger as the bad ones shrink away?
What a lesson in these words. Whether consciously 'knowing' this the last or not. To absorb each moment like it is is to live most fully. Obviously, you do or you couldn't make your pen do the magic it does. Sorry for next years' (plural intended) students. ----Charlie
Thanks for stopping by, Charlie! Another post could be devoted to our conversations around knowing or not knowing when the last time has actually occurred. I can see gifts in both, which is good because most of the time we don't know that we exited that stage!
Thanks again for your heartfelt, honest, and well-written sharing. If this is your last, many students will miss out on a wonderful teacher. And if it is your last, congratulations on making what must have been a hard decision.
Rick, your comments are always so lovely. This class was my last. The decision wasn't that difficult. Just a basic cost/benefit analysis, a process that I know you are intimately familiar with. I'll miss showing them an orange and blue male Mojave black-collared lizard. I'll even miss swearing when it latches onto my left index finger! But time rolls on, and different times call for different foci. The window of life is narrowing.
Hi Tom. I sent you an email to update you on the different time I have recently entered.
Sounds melancholic. Also reminds me of a story about myself. I used to take students to Costa Rica every other year (since 1991), and I kept a journal each time. One year I noticed that my previous journal had an interesting entry the first night after arriving at our San José Hotel, all in capital letters I wrote: "THIS IS THE LAST TIME! NEVER DO THIS AGAIN YOU IDIOT!!!" Then when I looked in the rest of my CR journals it turns out I wrote almost the same thing every single time! And yet, when the next odd year rolled around, there I was again, in a cheap hotel in San José, writing in my journal. So I guess it must be like giving birth. At the time, you swear it is the last time you'll go through that shit. But then... you forget how bad it was, or maybe it's just that the pleasant memories get larger as the bad ones shrink away?
What a lesson in these words. Whether consciously 'knowing' this the last or not. To absorb each moment like it is is to live most fully. Obviously, you do or you couldn't make your pen do the magic it does. Sorry for next years' (plural intended) students. ----Charlie
Thanks for stopping by, Charlie! Another post could be devoted to our conversations around knowing or not knowing when the last time has actually occurred. I can see gifts in both, which is good because most of the time we don't know that we exited that stage!