Doing Better, Part 2

Last year I wrote about the inspiration I get from my kids to be better and try harder.  Lately I have been unusually overwhelmed by the amount of self-improvement I want to accomplish, and I've been really exhausted by the questions that won't stop asking themselves over and over again in my head.  Perhaps this is part of growing up, this constant nagging of oneself.  Perhaps this is one of the markers of adulthood - like having your own washer and dryer or hosting a big holiday at your house.

In the recent insomnia and chaos that wants to take over me, I've been thinking a lot more about improvements I want to make in my personal life.  Here are the top five things that I'm desperately interested in getting better at: {help!}

1. Letting go.  When things go wrong I grin and bear it and say things like "That's ok," or "No worries," or "I'm over it." Spoiler alert: I'm not over it.  I try to fool people that I am in order to decrease friction, maintain good relationships, and keep things moving along.  I even try to fool myself but it doesn't often work.  When some idiot driver nearly slams into me or a pedestrian walks right in front of my car in the middle of the street, for example, I get extremely angry.  I may not always scream and holler, and I may keep driving as if nothing's wrong, but I am fuming.  These commuter annoyances, like many of the things I struggle to let go of, are a daily occurrence.  So shouldn't I be able to just honk and move on with my life like every other New Yorker? (Ha!) My blood boils for several minutes as I fake being cool.  The "fake it till you make it" thing is not working, or at the very least the "make it" part is taking forever.  How do I learn how to chill out and let go for real? 
2. Organization.  At times my stuff seems to be everywhere.  Doesn't everyone need to be better at this?  
3. Sleeping.  I've always been a bad sleeper, but lately it's gotten progressively worse.  It seems to take me eons to fall asleep and/or go back to sleep.  How the heck do you get better Zs without medicating?  
4. Running.  I am the worst runner, possibly ever.  You know those ads and pictures you see of girls running?  Their hair is bouncing in a pretty ponytail, they look tall, determined,  and strong of mind and body?  Yeah, I don't look like that.  {I look like this.} What I do outside on the pavement cannot actually be considered running, so I don't know why I call it that.  Also, I hate running so I don't even know why I want to be better at it, but I do, and I think that relates directly to....
5. Being bad.  I don't mean coloring outside the lines or breaking the rules once in a while.  I mean genuinely sucking at something and doing it anyway.  For most of my life I have had an intuitively good sense of where my talents lie and where I am essentially useless.  Like most people (?), I don't generally relish doing something I'm awful at.  I don't mind trying, but if it's not going my way I'd rather move on and try something else.  Being a teacher has helped.  I tell my kids to persevere, to strive for growth instead of perfection, and that there is value in the struggle, value in old-fashioned elbow grease and hard work.  I have no choice but to model these philosophies in my professional life.  My kids have to learn, and if I'm no good at what they need me to do, I have to try to get better, and keep trying. But just doing it in my teacher life is no longer enough; I want to be the kind of person who is ok with failing every once in a while.  How do you aim for better while being ok with the fact that sometimes you're bad? 

Our school recently had a class competition where the grand prize was a fun field trip to do an indoor sports arena.  Earlier this week the kids from one of my classes were gathered around looking at the tally sheet for their class, pointing and smiling at their score.

"Look, Ms. Haskell, we're doing better!"
Another child shrugged and added, "We're not going to win, but we've gone up a lot lately." 

They were right - they didn't win.  Not even close.  But they were happy with improvement. They were happy to try.  So that afternoon when I got home, I begrudgingly laced up my sneakers and went outside for a "run."  Maybe this self-improvement game is part of growing up.  But people, it comes with some serious growing pains.  {And some minor shin splints.}  

The Matthew Effect

I don't understand how people can seriously believe that the Bible is a literal and completely unembellished account in every word, phrase, and tale.  There are several parts of the Bible that I think many modern day people should find severely disturbing.  The story of God telling Abraham to bring Isaac up the mountain to burn him, for example, is just incredibly dark and upsetting to me.  I have always chosen to take it as a highly-elaborated fable rather than a fully accurate narrative.  If that makes me a blasphemer, I really don't care; I can't get down with the idea of God telling his favorite man to go kill his own son, or the idea of that man being so ready to do it without so much as brief explanation.  It's one thing for the stories to show this ruthlessness in ordinary people, but the way God tests Abraham like a crazed and jealous girlfriend, and the way Abraham so thoughtlessly obeys, is chilling.  So, I go with the idea that it's a little fictionalized, meant to teach readers about the enduring powers of faith and mercy.

There's one other passage that sticks with me, long after I stopped actually reading the Bible at all.  This one is from the new testament, and is about a group of slaves whose master splits up his "talents" which I can only assume means his money, among the group of them.  Everyone knows the part that basically says the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but the context of that really famous line (the one who has will be given more, but the one who has little will wind up with nothing; I'm paraphrasing) make that particular sentiment even more uncool.  The parable says that the master splits up the money based on each of the slaves' potential to perform.  The two who are given more money (more talents?) are able to turn a 100% profit, or close to it.  The other slave who only got "one talent" goes off and buries it in the ground.  When he tries to explain himself, he tells his master that since he knows the boss does zero work and just basically makes money off of other people's labors, he shouldn't really make a profit at all.  A pretty logical and ballsy argument if you ask me, but of course, he gets berated and called a lazy idiot or something of the like.  Then it's written in the supposed words of God (isn't that what people call the Bible, the direct words?) that if you aren't naturally the smartest, richest, or most adept person, you're essentially screwed and won't be able to make anything of yourself or your circumstances.  Do people really think that is what God, the being who allegedly made everything out of nothing, would say?

Instead of advising toward the complete disownment of people who aren't as talented, rich, or adept as you'd like (read: it actually advises that you throw such useless humans out to weeping and gnashing of teeth), the next verse should have read, "so if you're one to whom little's been given, it's going to be a long road; don't bury opportunities, but dig them up instead, and work like a dog to do it."  I remember listening to the priest do this gospel reading when I was a teenager and thinking, "hey Catholic powers-that-be, why in the hell would you choose to have us hear THAT?"

Something can be made out of nothing, and no text on Earth, sacred or not, is going to convince me otherwise.