The Polarity of my Life
Why are our faults highlighted more than our successes? Is it because our successes are considered normal or "what we're supposed do" while our faults or mistakes demonstrate an aberration to the status quo and must be highlighted for correction?
The story of my life seems to be one of polarity and is demonstrated by many instances where I do something extremely well, positive, or where I demonstrated a level of maturity or leadership only to have have a grave mistake, a poor decision/judgment, or some other sort of misbehavior pointed out to me later in the day that overshadowed or mollified the positive component of the day.
These instances have haunted me since my elementary school days. If I think really hard, I can probably recollect the number of times on 1 hand between 1st & 3rd grade that my name was not on the board at the end of the day (or even lunch) and it often had a check mark or 2 that may have included a call home at the end of the day or caused me to miss a recess or serve a lunch detention. One particular day in the 3rd grade, I had to serve a detention of morning recess because I had already reached the name + check quota for a missed recess by 9:30am. My teacher bluntly asked me, "what are we going to do different?" I didn't have answer for her because I was 9 and didn't see a reason to change, but I did work on my comprehension questions about of the the reading book and didn't have homework that night....
In the 4th grade, my teacher was a practitioner of a seating arrangement called the "pod system" where by students sat in a group of 4 facing each other and were supposed to work together to earn points before the seating arrangement was altered ~every 2 weeks. Because I am very social, I talked with my group members frequently, usually at the wrong times and I was eventually removed from the pod system for a period time before being permitted back in and told that my seat would never change unless my pod won the pod competition. Well, that that finally happened and after finally being the member of a winning pod and being appointed the "pod leader" for ~15 minutes, I was permanently banished to the back of the classroom after laughing at a fellow pod member's joke when there wasn't anything going on, it was, as I considered it, social time and you can't blame me for having loud voice and laugh...
In 6th grade, during the course of one day, I was asked to remove myself from both my Art and Band classes and I was forced to sit in the hall because a poor joke or misplaced comment reach the ears of my instructor. Naturally, my classroom who knew about my past shenanigans very well was not amused at seeing me in the hallway. Knowing I was in the doghouse with my teacher, I showed up early the next morning to sell school pencils in the lobby before school, a project my teacher had put me in charge of and a task I had organized and scheduled my other students to participate in during the course of the sale.
I had another one of those days today and while I cannot go into details, I felt like I was on Cloud 9 one moment and in the proverbial doghouse the next. I don't take criticism well. That's not true, I can take criticism just fine because I've been taking it all my life in some form, but perhaps because I was never recognized for success, only failure, that now I have what some doctors call "a complex". Who knows!
These occurrences have happened frequently in my life and I probably should be used to the fact by now that my successes will never be celebrated but my faults will always be pointed out to me, some times harshly.
All for tonight.
The story of my life seems to be one of polarity and is demonstrated by many instances where I do something extremely well, positive, or where I demonstrated a level of maturity or leadership only to have have a grave mistake, a poor decision/judgment, or some other sort of misbehavior pointed out to me later in the day that overshadowed or mollified the positive component of the day.
These instances have haunted me since my elementary school days. If I think really hard, I can probably recollect the number of times on 1 hand between 1st & 3rd grade that my name was not on the board at the end of the day (or even lunch) and it often had a check mark or 2 that may have included a call home at the end of the day or caused me to miss a recess or serve a lunch detention. One particular day in the 3rd grade, I had to serve a detention of morning recess because I had already reached the name + check quota for a missed recess by 9:30am. My teacher bluntly asked me, "what are we going to do different?" I didn't have answer for her because I was 9 and didn't see a reason to change, but I did work on my comprehension questions about of the the reading book and didn't have homework that night....
In the 4th grade, my teacher was a practitioner of a seating arrangement called the "pod system" where by students sat in a group of 4 facing each other and were supposed to work together to earn points before the seating arrangement was altered ~every 2 weeks. Because I am very social, I talked with my group members frequently, usually at the wrong times and I was eventually removed from the pod system for a period time before being permitted back in and told that my seat would never change unless my pod won the pod competition. Well, that that finally happened and after finally being the member of a winning pod and being appointed the "pod leader" for ~15 minutes, I was permanently banished to the back of the classroom after laughing at a fellow pod member's joke when there wasn't anything going on, it was, as I considered it, social time and you can't blame me for having loud voice and laugh...
In 6th grade, during the course of one day, I was asked to remove myself from both my Art and Band classes and I was forced to sit in the hall because a poor joke or misplaced comment reach the ears of my instructor. Naturally, my classroom who knew about my past shenanigans very well was not amused at seeing me in the hallway. Knowing I was in the doghouse with my teacher, I showed up early the next morning to sell school pencils in the lobby before school, a project my teacher had put me in charge of and a task I had organized and scheduled my other students to participate in during the course of the sale.
I had another one of those days today and while I cannot go into details, I felt like I was on Cloud 9 one moment and in the proverbial doghouse the next. I don't take criticism well. That's not true, I can take criticism just fine because I've been taking it all my life in some form, but perhaps because I was never recognized for success, only failure, that now I have what some doctors call "a complex". Who knows!
These occurrences have happened frequently in my life and I probably should be used to the fact by now that my successes will never be celebrated but my faults will always be pointed out to me, some times harshly.
All for tonight.
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