Taking Care Of Yourself
Teachers on a daily basis are placed under undue stress and tension. The workload may seem like it is never ending. Just when they think that they have it under control a memo appears in their mailbox giving them another assignment that creates more anxiety. Daily, teachers feel less and less appreciated and often just feel like they want to give up. They leave school exhausted both physically and emotionally, and often when they get home they don’t even have the energy to devote to their families or their personal lives. The pressure from the job creates such stress that they lose their focus on their diet, and begin to eat the wrong foods. They become so lethargic that exercise isn’t even a consideration. Because of exhaustion they stop reading for enjoyment, and conversations with their loved ones become just small talk that has no real substance. They tend to lose sight of the relationships in their lives that mean the most to them and are with their loved ones physically but not emotionally. They tend to live day to day just trying to survive and are not even thinking of what the real big picture of their life purpose really is.
Bare Feet and White Flour
Have you ever wondered why your parents did some of the things that they did. I did lots of times. My dad had so many regimented activities that I thought he had a screw lose or something. I’m only going to talk about two here because there are too many to put into one essay. I really spent time observing my dad as a kid and listening to him, and it wasn’t until I was about forty that I realized some of the benefits of his behavior and very recently some of the real benefits of his behavior. My dad had an unbelievable fear of getting a cold. He came home from WWII with malaria and tuberculosis. He was always cautious of sharing food, towels, cups, and silverware. Any watermark on silverware in a restaurant was sent back immediately. I remember one time in a restaurant in New York a fork went back three times. Some people send food back he sent the silverware back. It got so bad that one guy sitting close to use told my dad that the he thought that the waitress was on Candid Camera. If you sneezed you were accused of trying to bring a cold into the house, to try and kill him. He was hospitalized on December 27, 1967 due to a reoccurrence of the TB and was sent to the infirmary at the veteran’s hospital in East Orange NJ for 3 months. When he came out thats when anything and everything could give him a cold. Two things were absolutes, cold feet and white flour. I never saw my father walk around without shoes or slippers on. He wouldn’t walk three feet without putting on a pair of slippers. If you sneezed he would always ask you what you ate. My sister, my mother, and I thought he was crazy. Bare feet and white flour would make you sick and if you got sick, well as he put it, “If I get a cold I am finished.”
