Living With Less Than/Greater Than and Wild Geese

Thinking again (oh, STOP THAT, Eileen…) as I trudge through backlogs of clerical work and a good five hours of retroactive better-preparation handout-creating for a calligraphy class I started teaching at a library last night.

For perspective, though I hate to put this here, I’m being paid $200 to do this course.

It will meet for four weeks, with each class 1.5 hours long. I will drive 45 minutes each way to the location.

And, I have made myself available by text/email to coach/answer questions.

Now that I know the makeup of the class (11 of 15 showed up, and the class is free to the public, thanks to grants) I had a better sense how to plan/teach it; I have not taught a calligraphy class in about 20+ years. My anxiety was very high yesterday, due in part to worry over my preparations and ability to present in front of a group.

Mid-day, I went out to my shop to get a large calligraphy piece down (“Wild Geese”) as typically students enjoy getting a sense of their instructor’s background/competence. I stood on a wood chair, which collapsed and broke as I literally and suddenly crumpled to the floor, banging the back of my head against the wall and having the large framed art itself bounce (at least once) off of either my head or other body parts (it happened so fast and I was so confused what was happening).

I skinned my left elbow and had another 3 inch cut elsewhere on my body, and this morning I threw on the same casual cotton dress (one of my favorites) and noticed there is a hole in the back.

My sandal ended up about 5 feet away yesterday and I had a headaches and was shook up…but…I was glad that the glass in the frame didn’t break.

Of course I removed the item’s price tag since I was simply going to show the students (all younger to middled aged women…yes…at one point I was entertaining them when several had arrived by suggesting we place a bet on whether any men would show up for calligraphy lessons! Humor always helps, in most situations).

A well-meaning friend later sent me a private message suggesting that maybe I should call out from teaching that first class…that they would understand. This message, as well-intended as it was, only added to the compounding of my feelings. That is not the way things work, not at all. It just isn’t. Not in my world, for sure. I often feel not understood. While someone who fell and hit their head–having been shook up and with a light headache that was probably less than a concussion–might call in and say “I’m going to skip this first class”…certainly the instructor cannot do this unless they’ve literally been taken to the ER.

Not in my book, not in my world.

I have high standards–and with that comes the lifting of seemingly unbearable weights. Day after day after day after day…

____

At the moment, I can’t help but thinking of the less than/greater than concept that (most of us) learn in math, but has many applications into our emotional and spiritual sensibilities.

_____

No matter what I do, it will never be enough…it is less than.

I think of a good friend who years ago told me: “Divorce doesn’t solve anything; you simply trade one kind of problem for another.” This is a truth and applicable to most anything in life where choices must be made. We opt for the set of problems that is, or seems, most manageable.

When I consider both divorces and the tremendous hardships of all sorts that were trade-offs, I definitely in the ultimate sense, chose the set of issues that were less than the weights of the existing issues at those times.

And this, left me each time with greater than any one person can properly manage or emotionally/spiritually bear. Because, life is not/was not/should not be this way.

Since I now have greater than it seems one can bear, it leaves me with a life that feels less than what I had hoped and dreamed for. And while many might suggest settling for less than, the thought of that seems greater than I can imagine, in terms of compounding the impact of the less than.