School is starting soon.
Now, every single year, I get ready for school. This involves some constant, tangible actions: ordering the type of notebook that I like to use in class, for instance, and taking stock of what I might need for the coming year. Do I have enough pencils? Flashcards? Highlighters? But this year, I’ve been acutely aware of a sort of getting-ready that has nothing to do with visiting Office Max or the local stationery store. It’s the mental preparation.
In my school life, there are a lot of potential joys and a lot of potential stressors that simply don’t exist during the summer. And I’ve felt myself gearing up to them in the way that an athlete, for instance, might stretch right before a competition. I’ve been listening to music, reading poetry, writing a lot. I’ve been imagining how a perfect school day would go: what am I wearing? How am I acting in class? What do I do during breaks?
The main fact I’ve realized, through all this preparation, is that I was constantly stressed last year. Constantly, severely stressed. But because it was constant, it felt normal. And all the gearing-up I’ve been doing has been in reaction to that. I can feel myself putting on a sort of mental armor.
Click. One piece to protect me from criticism.
Click. Another piece to brace me when I’m exhausted.
Click. Over my heart, a piece that insists I can handle anything and everything.
But there are downsides to having armor on. For example: just because I can handle everything doesn’t mean I should. If I’m exhausted, it’d be better look at how I can adjust my schedule to get more sleep. If I’m always deflecting criticism, I’ll never see how some of it is given to help me. And have you ever tried to walk around in armor? It’s heavy and cumbersome and not exactly conducive to… well, anything. Unless you’re a knight.
So I’ve been actively working to come up with alternatives. I’ve been looking up poems to put in my locker. I got an adorable, fluffy keychain to put on my keys (because the more adorable, fluffy things one has, the better life is). I’ve been looking at how to lessen my extracurriculars, so that I have more time to do the things I really care about. I’ve vowed to carry a camera everywhere, so that I actively seek out beauty in the world around me.
It’s a different kind of armor, to be sure. But my hope is that it’ll help me get through this year more gracefully than I got through the last one. It’s a good goal to focus on right now: to live life with grace.
I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable and beautiful and afraid of nothing as though I had wings. -Mary Oliver
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