The first time I could read the teacher comments on my report card I was eight. The only critical comment was: Alice lacks initiative.
I didn't know what the word 'initiative' meant so I asked my teacher to explain it to me. She told me to go look it up. But I didn't because that takes too much initiative.
I just kept that word in my head until many months later someone, probably my brother, let slip that word in a conversation and told me what it meant.
It means my life is a spectator sport.
It means I'm always waiting for someone to rescue me.
It means I'm too pessimistic to strike out on my own, naysayers be damned.
And it means I may never get up the gumption to finally do what I really love, pragmatism and socialist tendencies be damned.
6 comments:
I doubt that what your teacher said is true, given your current station in life. A lot of times, teachers are wrong. Or we change. But - I do understand that we are impacted by the things that teacher figures say about us - I remember a HS teacher once telling not just me, but the ENTIRE CLASS, that none of us could ever manage to become President because of where we came from (read: podunk Wisconsin city). I never quite forgave him for that.
Yes, that was very shortsighted and professionaly irresponsible of your teacher!
I've always just accepted what authorities told me because, you know, I lack the initiatve to question them.
But seriously though, I feel like everything in my life has been fortuitously handed to me on a silver platter. I've never had the experience of grunting, sweating, and really really working for something.
Maybe I've never found anything I wanted that much...or maybe I've wanted things badly before but doubted the payoff could really be worth the effort.
I just deleted my whole comment by accident. I hate when that happens. Anyway.
My journalism teacher once told me the same thing. She later broke a chair she was sitting on, landing hard on her bum,and was out for 3 weeks.
I don't know the moral of that story but it makes me smile every time i think about it.
I think initiative has to do with how much we want something. And perhaps our lack thereof just tells how unimportant something is in our life. I believe if we want something really bad we always fight for it whole heartedly, and we take the initiative to get it.
Your teacher got what was coming to her. That is nice a moral story.
And I agree that desire is innately tied to initiative...but I feel like so many other things can get in way, like disbelief, duty, pessimism, and most of all, reality. Some things, no matter how much we want it, will never happen...in this life anyway. I feel like the key that separates a life of triumph from tragedy is knowing the difference between what is possible and what is impossible.
so what is this thing that you "really love" ????
i would like to know :)
Honestly? Singing.
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