ALL THAT GLITTERS
As I entered Wal-Mart recently through the automatic doors, I was drawn to the pretty yellow “Clearance” signs in the women's department.
Now you should know that “Clearance” signs are a long-standing weakness of mine, rivaled only by “yard sale,” “garage sale,” and “library sale” signs.
Bathing suits and sundresses were hanging on racks crowded so close together it was impossible to get a cart between them. Luckily, since I “only needed one thing,” I hadn't grabbed a cart as I came in the door. So I plunged between the displays, instantly distracted from my purpose in coming in the first place.
I rifled through a few racks and then noticed, out of the corner of my eye, an elderly shopper in a wheelchair near a side aisle. Her wheelchair was tilted at a rakish angle so my instantaneous reaction was to rush for the chair to prop it up. By the time I got the few steps to the chair, I discerned what the real situation was.
This woman had been rolling along the Wal-Mart aisle, minding her own business, when she had noticed a coin on the floor, half hidden under the closest “Clearance” clothing rack. In her exuberance to obtain said coin, she reached across her body to cage it with her 4-pronged cane, tilting her wheelchair dangerously to one side in the process. She couldn't maneuver her chair nimbly enough or bend down far enough to retrieve her coin. But was she going to let go of her prize? Was she going to save herself by relinquishing her coin? She was NOT.
Fully understanding her motivation (after all, I have stopped traffic to retrieve coins in a cross-walk before), I reached down for her, moved her 4-pronged walking stick to one side, and picked up the quarter. Dropping it into her outstretched palm, I told her to “have a good day!” and, reminded of my purpose for being there, proceeded on my way toward the back of the store.
This woman is a beautiful illustration
On the one hand, when we discover our “why,” our reason for getting up and doing what we do every day, we should cage it and hold onto it with the audacious tenacity of this woman in an aisle in Wal-Mart.
Conversely, all that glitters is not gold.
We can get derailed by stopping for every shiny little glittering promise of something better than what we have or what we are doing. FOMO (fear of missing out) is real and can cause us to be distracted, to stop and tip, to veer from our purpose, to grow disillusioned even though what we are doing seems to be working.
What we need is balance. Balance will allow us to evaluate our methods and environment, and to make improvements and adjustments when necessary, while continuing forward toward our goal. Because, as we know but forget sometimes, forward motion is always the goal. No matter how much or how little, always forward.
But how will you know you have left the track if you haven't defined the track?
Or as Bloody Mary so convincingly sings in South Pacific, “You got to have a dream. If you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?!” I highly recommend that you craft a “missions statement” or a “vision statement” or whatever you like to call it, if you haven't already. These are stated goals for your child(ren)'s education that you can hold on to when you forget what and “why” you are doing. Turning aside from these goals, distracted by shiny object,s will surely cause you to wobble and threaten your goal of forward motion.
When I wrote a list of goals a number of years ago, prompted by the first few chapters in Cathy Duffy's book, 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum, I was surprised that none of my top seven (7) goals for my children had anything to do with their academic development! How strange! I thought. Isn't that the goal of homeschooling? An education? No, not really. An atmosphere of education in the home is as much about character building as it is about anything else. Therefore, I concluded, the curriculum isn't the most important thing spurring us toward our goals. The most important thing is our vision, our focus, our “why,” those benchmarks I had set early in our journey when I was still trying to decide what to use to teach grammar, and math, and science. I still come back to those goals periodically to gauge our progress.
And so, to promote balance and sanity, I suggest you write out your long-term goals. I suggest you review them every year or two. And remember to put that 4-pronged cane away and stay in your own lane!