The Path to Happiness?

I am almost at the end of my writing journal and it is now six months since I left teaching. I have flicked back through the pages of my journal with a wry smile as my eye catches some of the quotes pasted within. It is interesting to see how many strike a chord with me now. Where I stand now, with a book published, a new script written and perhaps most importantly, an acceptance of myself within the new parameters of the life I have now set up. Perhaps the most pertinent of these quotes is this -
“If you want something you never had, you have to do something you’ve never done.”

This year has felt like quite a lot of doing things that I’ve never done and sometimes that has been very difficult. Who do we turn to when faced with a hurdle, or at times a brick wall? As a child there was always a parent or teacher around to explain and to help you over an obstacle. There always had to be that delicate balance established between helping you to think around a problem and solve it and not to step in and do everything for you so that you were no longer required to think. Resilience and problem solving are strands that we are in danger of losing in the current educational landscape but that discussion would form content for a lengthy piece, not accommodated here. Needless to say, skills learnt as a child in these areas will reap their own rewards in the long term when times are hard as an adult.

As adults we are mostly expected to know what we are doing and it can feel wrong to admit that we don’t and it can be a challenge to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. During my teaching career my philosophy was always that learning should be a habit that you adopt for life. I have certainly had to learn a lot in the past six months.
Change is always unsettling, often scary, but without change there is no personal growth. Keeping the status quo, having all remain the same becomes mundane and dulls the senses to the richer details of life.

When the changes we face are significant, we need support to stand up and keep going sometimes. I am back now to thinking of that balance that I mentioned. Support can be a word of encouragement, advice from another who has more experience or a push to stop deliberating and to commit to a course of action. At different times this year I have received all of these and some days it has not felt good to hear it but it was necessary.

Feeling that I have accomplished a lot in a relatively short space of time, a friend asked me this week what I was going to do next. My response was ‘Rest, think, and write some more.’ Although this reply focuses upon my chosen writing direction, I am also thinking about other areas where I am yet to achieve - other things I have never done. What would be on your bucket list? When pushed to go for it, I wonder which I could manage to achieve. I am still wrestling with the idea of getting a seahorse tattoo. I have places that I have always wanted to visit, including Canada, New Zealand and Italy. I would love to conquer my fear of heights and ride in a hot air balloon or take a cable car up a mountainside. It would be fantastic to choreograph a dance routine for a theatre show and see it all performed in full costume. As with all challenges, all tasks that seem insurmountable, it is best to focus upon the first step. Every journey, even the longest hike, starts with that first step. Who knows where those first steps may lead me to?