Quiet Voice, Loud Mind, Personal Greatness

Loud Mind

My mind is never quiet. Sometimes as I am falling asleep it settles to a hum but generally it is buzzing with activity. Its my hive. Thoughts fluttering in and out: radiant ideas, colorful perceptions, vibrant brainstorming all leading me in different directions. Each tempting me with nectar and pollen. Sometimes they stick, sometimes they are hollow when I reach them. This cavalcade of mental conversation can lead to conceptual or experimental design. The contemplation either sends me through trial and error, honey is created or not. These projects evolve with the swarm of energy. They unfold daily, often resurfacing with a thick viscosity, until I add it to the honey comb. Waxy and succulent, these strategies often get harvested and added to the collective of tactics, procedures and approaches I use frequently.

Often though, it becomes conceptual - formulated into a big idea. These take hold, the buzz is louder, vibrating and humming until I set out to execute a plan. If I choose to go in a different direction, the gentle sting of a reminder, or a navigational redirect lures me back. These become elixirs, a sweet magical panacea- these are sought after, however, their arrival from the garden is not by my choice, they can not be forced. When they arrive, however, they do so with great fanfare- this is not to say they always come to fruition, but they do spark other avenues. These visions, muses, need more time, more effort, more focus to design and implement. But they are the ideas that shape my actions, illuminate and stimulate ingenuity. They can be bold and obvious or slow to ignite and delicate- either way- they make an impact on how I think and what I do. My conceptual processing and analysis is driven by tunnel vision, agility and discernment. It is cross-country rather than urban travel. It takes refinement and editing.

I start my day with too much information, I am overwhelmed, I have to jot down ideas in my journal. Bits and pieces of inner dialogue, visual cues, words that spark creativity. Then I have to walk away. Drink a cup of coffee and read, or write a blog post. Think about something else. Hone my verbalization, my personal melody. When I wake up my inner music is Jazz, lots of shrieking instruments, rapping of percussion, mixed with grunge guitar and the harmony of a piano. Sounds chaotic right? It is. My brain is trying to separate all the sounds into their perspective rhythms. It is exhausting. I get distracted and my mind wanders from sheer overload. But, when I finally hear each instrument, each beat- my creativity sharpens. I may lose concepts in the unraveling, but those that remain, become little ditties, ear worms per se, until I do something with them. This orchestration, pollination of sorts, happens every morning and often at the end of the day as well, as my mental wing beat slows and the play list of the day begins to upload.

Why am I telling you this? This lack of fluency, chaotic rambling may seem foreign to most people- yet for many of our students, it is routine. When they are sitting in our classrooms, this cacophony of the senses, extended, shapeless circumference of information- rapidly bombarding, noise, spots of clarity surrounded by moments of guitar strumming- is constant. To some it may appear as visual distraction- a million ideas wiggling their fingers close to their peripheral. To some it comes as waves of slow steady buzzing, circling them or the banging of cymbals. But, it is there. Every student gets distracted. We as educators get frenzied and find ourselves adrift, on occasion. I know I do. I have to repeat my mantra- refocus at least once a class. However, we recognize we are lost more quickly than our students and we rarely hold it against ourselves. So why do we get so agitated and perturbed with our students when they lose their way? Everyone loses sight of personal greatness, personal potential, we just need a nudge to remember.

Personal Greatness

Finding our personal greatness can only happen if we turn to look at our faults, our hindrances in the eye and accept them. I practice, daily, frequently, on keeping my mind focused. I have mantras I repeat every class period to keep me on track, to keep my eye on the prize. The trophy or blue ribbon is not self-satisfaction or gratitude- but rather fluency and consistency. When I focus, really observe and remove the buzzing, the hum, the aura of flashing light- I have a sense of myself. I understand my reasoning, my impulses, my isolation. Above all else, I recognize the struggle for personal greatness in others. We all want to be recognized but I believe deep down, we want to be happy with ourselves first, to love ourselves just the way we are. When we are children we start out having this sense of self, this trust and admiration of 'us'- but we lose it as we get older because the comparison makes us feel less great.

We compare. As humans we compare ourselves to others. But comparing ourselves to great people does not diminish our greatness. Our personal greatness may be obscured by doubt, dimmed by the flashbulbs focused on others, by their personal paparazzi. We all get trapped in the quagmire of short-term gain over long-term sustainability. The freshman action may get people noticed, revered but the sophomoric, junior and future endeavors are what really matters. The choice to dig in the dirt, get stung by a bee every now and then, lacing up our sneakers for a 10K. This is what matters. Knowing when it will be best for us to sprint. When it will be more beneficial for us to be a marathoner. Ultimately, being able to adjust our pace accordingly. Drinking lots of water and crossing the finish line even of we are last, this is personal greatness.

Personal greatness means waking up every morning to the babel and clangor of thoughts and ideas. Knowing in order to synchronize them into a musical piece, we must be patient. We do not need a quorum. What we need is a clarity of greatness. Even if no one sees your greatness- if you believe, you can find your personal greatness. You can accept the pandemonium as your personal cadence. Percussion and bedlam may be the tempo I awake to, the modulation many of our students march to, but ultimately it is the meter, the miles we travel, the luminous intensity that redirects our actions, for better or for worse. It is current, flow, charge and fluctuation. Wrapped in oscillation, reverberation and aperture. It is the nature of change itself.

Quiet voice, loud mind. Jumble, ensemble, colony and yes swarm. Our greatness can be collective or unique. Yet, we all have greatness. Some thrive on conceptual living while others experimental. Some need a balance of both. Whether a marathon is in your future or a few laps around the track- get some good running shoes. Tie the laces tight and let the race begin. There may be a hive of bees nearby, flying solo or in a swarm but eventually they will share in the fruits of their labor- this is personal greatness. We will always have the demons inside us that make us feel less worthy, less successful, less great. These collide with our positive thoughts every day. But we can't ignore them, we can't let them fall into extinction, because we need them- they pollinate, provide the elixir of creativity- they help form the hive, the protective layer around our chaotic, busy minds. Without turmoil- we would never see the tranquility, feel the calm, know with uncertainty the pleasure of knowing ourselves.













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