According to Eckhart Tolle, there is no future and there is no past, because all we can ever live in is the present. Rather than trying to attack his comment with logic, consider his point that we can gain peace of mind from internal stillness. It's still all well and good to learn from experience and plan as we need to, but the idea (partially) is to minimize all that extra mental energy that can unnecessarily run us ragged.
Friday was, quite simply, a bad day. I was ill going to bed the night before, tired waking up for work, and late because the normal 10 minutes it takes for a taxi to arrive took 30. First block went well, second block included my second "orange violation" form in two days (that's part of our discipline system), and my favorite group of students -- yes, I have favorites -- had only a half block due to a college inventory test. Most of the students for that test ambled in late, so a (good) parent meeting got delayed and ran 15 minutes into the time I was supposed to be using as a buffer to get to the airport.
Now the first and third blocks of teaching actually went well. And fortunately I had hired a driver who was waiting for me at the gate when I got to the school entrance 20 minutes late. Since I had checked in online the night before, I hopped right through security and then was told I had twenty minutes to eat before the flight. Chicken caesar salad, mandarin juice, almojabana -- only 15,000 pesos. The small cup of coffee on board actually gave me a little boost... My hotel in Santa Marta is only five minutes from the airport. The staff at the hotel was very nice. My room is clean, and there are four pools... All of this began to ease my mind, but along with the rain that fell from 5 pm yesterday through the overnight my mind was not quite settled.
A waiter from the restaurant did bring a tray of ceviche peruano, shrimp and calamari stir fry, and coco limonada into the breakfast room for me so that I could eat without walking through the deluge. My bed is so good to my back with its superior comfort in the three s's: size, softness, and sheets. This morning I had a nice Facebook Chat that let me release the student stuff from my system a little bit -- besides, only six of each block separates yesterday from final exams. The mostly cloudy weather didn't make the day a dark one today. I've enjoyed some episodes of The Big Bang Theory and online links to The Jack Benny Program. I spent two hours alternately swimming at the first pool and lounging on its well padded chairs surrounded by palm trees, other greenery, and a wall of running water. At the second pool later this afternoon I slept lightly for about an hour, and enjoyed what was visible of the sunset over the Caribbean from my chair (which was clearly set up to face due West.)
And then, while alone in the pool doing some kind of modified backstroke that I picked up from who knows who during who knows when, my mind really settled down. I noticed the faint music in the background. There was some measure of stillness. I came up with the idea of "TheHardestPart.Com" to possibly implement next year if I'm teaching -- a site to post daily podcasts explaining whatever students vote to be the hardest part of the lesson.
Ahhhh, stillness. As I get ready to return to the States I know that most of my daily life uses time very efficiently, and that not just the body but also the mind needs to power down. I dried off and nearly stood up to walk away, when my good sense of awareness caught the delayed results of the earlier sunset. The sky was red behind the clouds in the distance. I sat for five minutes just looking. There was the slow, incoming tide. The pool in front of me was churning more quickly and in the opposite direction. A plane took off from the airport and I tracked it far into the distance, finally feeling like a plane actually looked like it was moving quickly.
Peace feels well.
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