Escaping

Seems there is no running away from the past no matter how one tries to establish a new life by uprooting oneself and finding new contexts to belong to.

As though seeing the person on New Year's day wasn't bad enough, and having to have my dreams be invaded, I had to see the sister while having a nice supper with Betty two nights ago. The world is that small - at least it is extremely so here. It wasn't that brief encounter with the sister that was disturbing but the need to smile and say hi, as though neither of us were willing to acknowledge what had happened.

A painful reminder.

But the supper with Betty was memorable - not just the company with which I have had a very many with her - but for what she told me that night: from a more experienced teacher to another.

For one who actually believes that he has a wide perspective on things and a comprehension of many incomprehensibles in life, Betty, in her simplicity, made me realise that I could still be myopic to my own needs ... and even fears.

She was right in very many ways - that I was expecting too much from my own class; that I treated them as peers and they likewise, that made me feel the need to see them rise above what they are now. It is because they have formed, frightfully, a large part of my life but the reverse isn't true. Teachers, she said, are a larger part of students' life in their more formative years of 14-16; at 18, we have little influence on them.

Perhaps then.