The Joy of Feeling Small

Do more of what makes you feel small.

I recently sat in the ocean marveling at it’s strength. The waves washed over me. My toes and hands sunk deeper into the sand, and the sun kissed my cheeks as my lungs filled with the salty breeze. The ocean had no concern for me in the most beautiful way possible. Whether I sat there or not, it exists. Whether I walked further into the waves, they were not crashing harder or subsiding for me. The ocean, like all of nature, is to be respected and feared even. It’s what makes it so beautiful. To think that it continues to exist, long after I flew home, and will exist long after I leave this world is a thought that brings me peace and perspective.

Whether it’s the ocean or our animals at home, they don’t care whether we crushed our board presentation or our workout. They don’t know how much we checked off our to-do list or whether we met our water goal, they just know the present moment.

I found myself walking briskly everywhere during my time by the ocean – in a hurry to go everywhere and nowhere at all. Old habits die hard, and my work pace did not leave me until our last couple of days seaside. Just in time for me to go back to work where that brisk pace is seemingly all we know as educators.

And I just don’t know if I want this pace anymore. I feel vulnerable writing that. I’m uncertain whether I really have a choice. But I think many of us are tired. We are tired of not being able to use the restroom when we would like. We are tired of all the running to and from all things and nowhere at all, rushing through lunch if we eat at all, and from the workdays that seem to run into the evenings. We lie awake thinking about the demands of the upcoming day. We ask our significant others to repeat themselves because we hear nothing over our thoughts about work that happened or needs to happen.

I’m not writing this to make us feel bad or to criticize our important profession. I’m writing this because I want to figure this out. I want better for us and for our students too. In such a deeply human profession, we seem to leave little room to be…well, human.

The ocean will exist long after us, and the work will too. I want to make a positive difference without letting the present moments pass like sand through my hands.

We can’t take it with us. The work. The praise. The criticism. Our worldly possessions.

I want to let the beauty and miracle of being alive everyday wash over me. I want to wake up in awe of this life and the people in it. I want daily life to take my breath away and stop me in my tracks.

Many people have inspired this hope I have for us all of us, so much so that I write about it in my upcoming book. I guess I’m going to start saying no, so I can say yes. I’m going to say no to rushing through my days, so I can hug a little longer, laugh a little wilder, and love a little bigger.

I’m going to say yes to more of what makes me feel small, so I can live big.

Maybe nestled within reminders of how small we truly are lies the secret to a big, beautiful life. Maybe.