Why have I decided to stop teaching even though I enjoyed sharing my life with those willing to pay me to learn? Because I did not want to compete with the thoughts and words which taught me more than I can give back, including those from my philosophy/logic teacher at Walters State Community College, Gary Acquaviva:
http://www.valueviva.com/I write this blog believing I am the only one who reads this. Thus, I am sitting here talking with myself via a computer keyboard, every word an instant feedback to my bodily thought process, a condensed version of all the input/output of the environment surrounding me and this electronic machine.
I stopped teaching because I am a wanderer awed by the wonders of the world around me. I see without having a reason to systematically catalog and categorize a worldview except for these words that show to myself I existed outside this moment I'm in.
Teaching in a formalized classroom structure using someone else's classroom instructional material is always reconstructing the past for someone else's vision, view and hope for seeing how quickly students learn and adapt. I value my students' time in the moment too much to try to adapt my life in the moment to seeing how students adapt to material which is not mine.
My time here is limited, down to 14,783 days or so, if I take care of myself as a body. I care about my species but I am also a selfish person. I have goals that conflict with trying to outshine my previous professional professors/instructors/teachers. I do not want to compete with the images in my thoughts of the ones who taught me more than the classroom material they had to work with in the time we had to spend together in a classroom setting.
My hat's off to those who teach, who give their all to their instructional style, who see into the thoughts of their students individually and tailor their teaching to maximize the value and quality of time together with every one.
My journey takes me to farther fields to study further. My comprehension of my place on this planet and our place in the universe absorbs all the time I have. So far, my understanding of the languages of our species tells me we have a lot to learn and you have tons to teach me. We feel like we have accomplished much in our science and technology but we know so little that amazement still wakes me up in the morning to discover more.
Most importantly, I have learned I do not need to feel rushed in my attempt to grasp what's in front of me. The bombardment of stimuli will increase faster and faster. Thus, I risk missing more and more. However, our population grows and people specialise more and more everyday. Therefore, I can trust specialists to answer my questions or query for knowledge to aid my learning, building our knowledge sets in blogs and online databases for all to search, with pockets of secrets and intellectual property waiting to be revealed in some future moment I may never see.
A nod to every teacher, every aide, every instructor, every professor who agreed to work with me in the world of education so we could enjoy some time together. Formality brought us together. Informality made us friends. Insight made me full of wonder. I give thanks to you for being you so we could become us. This blog reflects who I am because of you.
I am not an island. I am a project under construction which has seen the light of day but has not completed its transformation into a fully-working product. I am the drop of rain which becomes an ocean wave that becomes a tidal pool which evaporates, becomes clouds which turn back into rain. One day I was a project manager. One day I was a retired person. One day I was a business owner. One day I was an instructor. Tomorrow I will be..? Well, I will be me just as I am me in this moment. I wander forward in wonder, always ready for who's next to be me.
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