It May Not Be Hollywood and Vine…

As a teacher, I try to mix-it-up each year and vary the theme that I start off each school year with.  While deciding on this year’s theme, I reflected on last year, when I chose a movie premiere theme, utilizing a mini clapboard, stars with the students’ names on them, and a variety of other Hollywood themed paper products and decorative items from the party goods store.  My new students were to be stars in their own movie, titled “The Real World-6th Grade”.  The idea I wanted them to buy into was that even though I was the producer/director, they each had the freedom to write their own lines, shape their roles, and add to the “script”.  I wanted them to know that their ideas were valued and that they did indeed have a considerable amount of control, in a “choose your own adventure” kind of way.  My intention was to lead them to the realization that they have the ability, to choose with intention, from a near bottomless vat of potential life realities, if they will just open their eyes and remain aware, of the choices and consequences laid out for them each and every day. 

As with many things in my life, and I’d venture to guess, yours too, my understanding of the significance of occurrences has on occasion come late, and in good company with hindsight.  In my teaching career especially, I’ve often judged myself as learning more through the teaching of lessons than I think the students did in the lessons themselves.  In retrospect, it’s as if a subconscious director led me to do that which I needed to do, in order to learn that which I needed to learn.   

Deepak Chopra, in The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire says, “In nearly everyone this participation in the stories of our lives is happening automatically, without awareness.  We live like actors in a play who are given only one line at a time, going through the motions without understanding the full story.  But when you get in touch with your soul, you see the whole script for the drama.  You understand.” 

As I reread those words, I connected my lines and realized that last year’s bulletin board was not just for my students.  Its message was from my soul, to my soul, only at the time, I was not fully aware of that fact.  My name will never appear on the Walk of Fame at Hollywood and Vine.  The odds are that none of my students’ names will ever appear there either.  With no offense to Hollywood’s finest intended, those facts are of such little significance that they hardly merit the physical energy required to type the words.  What does merit mentioning is the fact that each of our names is written on the script of our life, the most important script ever written, in which we do have the starring role, and directorial freedom.  As Deepak so eloquently stated and my bulletin board so elementarily announced, it is an incredibly exciting notion that we have the opportunity to change our roles and write our own scripts to our very own advantage if we simple increase our awareness and listen to what our souls have to say.

Peace and Love