Three day weekend got me thinking about some things...
First, I thought about how I have defined friends in my life. I have many, many, MANY awesome friends in my life. They are wonderful people and help me to overcome a lot of challenges. Some of them I see more often than others and some of them I only see on social media because they live so dang far away. Still, these people have been an integral part of my development as a person and I am truly grateful for what they do for me.
It occurred to me this weekend that the QUANTITY of time spent with my friends is not as important as the QUALITY of time we spend. I have always had this thought itching at the back of my mind that if I am not hanging out with my friends consistantly on a daily or weekly basis, then that means they are upset with me or that they don't want to be friends. I know that it sounds stupid, but it just nags at me for some reason. (I have to get out of my head sometimes. It's crazy in there.) I realized that even though we don't get to spend a lot of time together, that doesn't mean that we aren't close friends and that we aren't important to each other. It just means that we are busy with the everyday challenges of life that overwhelm us. When we do get together, it is truly AWESOME and we have so much fun.
Case in point... This very weekend, we were able to get together with a family that we consider our Best Friends. I will call them the "Besties". They are the same age as we are. (Literally... The wife is a few months older than me and the husband is a few months younger than The Pretty One...) They have 6 kids between them. It is a His, Hers, and Theirs kind of family. The two older kids don't live at home with them, and the four younger are around the ages of our kids, so everyone gets along and we have so much fun together. Anyways... We hadn't been able to hang out with each other for at least a month. (It might have been longer). We went over for a birthday party for the oldest child who was visiting from Seattle. We were only there for about an hour and a half, but it was AWESOME to be with our friends and just hang out and have fun.
So... QUALITY is much more important than QUANTITY... Remember that...
Second realization.... Just because someone doesn't want to spend time with me or get to know me doesn't mean that I am a bad person or not worth knowing.
There are people that I come into contact with on a regular basis that I respect and that I think are successful in some way. I would like to know these people a little better, but they don't have the same desire to know me. I often wonder if there is something wrong with me. I ask myself, "Why don't they like me?" or "What have I done to make them not want to be friends?" It is silly. It doesn't really matter what they think of me or why they think that. What matters is that I am comfortable with who I am and am capable of doing good things. I can still learn from these people, but it will always feel awkward to be with them.
So... I don't HAVE to be friends with EVERYBODY in order to learn from them.
Third realization... (Last one, I promise)... I can't measure the amount of success I have by the amount of success other people have.
I look around campus and see the teachers that the students really like or look up to. I see people that influence students so much that they get mentioned in graduation speeches. I see people that the administration asks to do things ALL the time while everyone else doesn't get the opportunity to participate. I see these people and wonder why I am not one of them. Why am I not popular and cool like they are?
And then I think, why do I need to be one of these people? Why is it important? It really isn't that important. I don't need to be popular and cool to be successful in my career. I have my own little sphere of influence on campus. I don't come out of my classroom much because I am needed there. There are kids that come to my room because they know it is a safe place to be themselves without the criticism and judgements of others. I do what I can to help those kids that want MY help. Maybe I am not graduation speech worthy, or in with the popular kids, or in the in-crowd with administration (sad that that even exists). But it doesn't matter. I am doing the very best that I know how and I have been successful with a LOT of kids in my short 7 year tenure as a teacher. They weren't necessarily the popular and cool kids, but they were AWESOME in their own ways and I am grateful for the opportunity to have helped them to overcome difficulties in their lives.
So... Don't measure your success by someone else's scale.... Make your own scale...
Have an AWESOME day...
