Giving up the ghost

I am not sure if it is really giving up or just reassigning my priorities. But it sure feels like giving up.

I have spent my entire professional career, which I am sometimes scared to admit is nearly 14 years, in the public sector. First as a teacher and then in non-profit educational organizations.

I became a teacher because I am a teacher. It is not necessarily my favorite career; certainly it is not where I saw myself when I thought about making my mark in the world. But, I am a good teacher. I am a teacher. I see and feel my students. I am able and willing to adapt to reach each one. Like all good teachers, even after a fantastic lesson, I go home with the one kid who didn't get it. That's what makes teachers good. Good teachers lack a sense of pride that allows others to say it's the kid's fault he/she didn't get it. A good teacher judges his/her worth by the success of his/her students.

I enjoyed being a teacher just for that reason. It is the only part of my life where I can say I am truly humble; it is the only time when selfish pride does not invade my personality.

Similarly in the non-profit arena, my desire to make things better on a larger scale, my pride has remained largely at bay. As I look around me, seeing so many others out to "save the world," I recognize how easy it is to fall into the messiah trap. I am genuinely grateful that I have remained on the edge of that abyss.

Instead, I look at this world and wonder why as good people with lofty goals we can't be more successful in changing things. Why we can't we be more effective, more efficient, more impacting? Why are we content to think that what we are good at is enough?

So, I have been humbled once again. I thought I could get into the wider world, outside my classroom, and make real change. The farther away from my class, my domain, the more it becomes clear to me that the real change I desire is remarkably impossible. And so my pride rears its ugly head again. I recognize that my goal of change needs to be tempered with reality. I know that I need to set goals that are realistic, measurable.

Leaving the world of "I can be the change agent" feels like losing a limb. I have lived too many years exchanging feeling successful with feeling righteous. Being in a no-win situation, again, makes me feel as though much of these past 14 years have been a waste. Not the teaching years, I know, in some way, I touched at least some of my students. But, certainly these last three and a half years have been, too often, an exercise in futility.

Turning this page, then, feels like both a failure and a victory. I expect no great adventure on the other side. I would like to have a job that some people call "phoning it in" or "punching the clock." I want a job that pays the bills and leaves some time for fun as well as continued introspection.

It makes me no less sad and no more happy to make this switch... I have pushed my emotional and physical self to the limit making this decision until, finally, it is the only decision left.