Welcome to Life: Teaching by Example

My boys are five and two years of age. One of the major outcomes that I want from their relatively short time under my roof is a sense of how to live within reality. 

So I’ve adopted this saying, “Welcome to Life.” I’m not sure where it came from, but it seems appropriate in many situations - it’s a great answer to “That’s not fair”. The only problem I have with it is that, like other lessons I want my children to learn, I must learn this one as well.

I’ve struggled with depression for most of my life – my first conscious memory of its presence was when I was ten years old. The nice thing about depression is that it’s consistent. From my childhood until a couple of years ago, I pretty much knew how I was going to feel from day to day.

Not that I would choose to stay depressed – I now experience joy, excitement, energy and relaxation. I’ve also felt more intense anger, anxiety and sadness than ever before.

I also didn’t anticipate the roller coaster I experience now that I’ve learned how better to process my emotions. I live in this – what is, to me, a strange – dichotomy in which I feel two totally opposite emotions at the same time.

My job change is a prime example. I’ve decided to take a year’s leave of absence from teaching. Once I made that decision, I spent the next four weeks never knowing how I was going to feel about it from hour to hour, much less day to day.

I have felt relief about being able to focus more on consistent writing time, then anxiety about money has rushed in. I have been in my classroom working with kids and this terrible grief has washed over me; an hour later, after shushing a kid who was cawing like a bird, I felt joy about getting to take a break from such a demanding job.

So when I sat with my counselor and told her about this confusing tumble of emotions, she looked at me and said, “Welcome to life.”

The phrase stung like a mosquito bite. I don’t know if I’ll keep saying it. I probably will. I’m a big fan of reality.

This article first appeared at www.oregonlive.com/oregonianopinion