Shadows

"Every action, every decision, every word, and every thought you make, no matter how minute or seemingly insignificant, defines you when you begin work."

These words, from Dr Yong, have reverberated with truth and echoing resoundingly ever since I started this 'job.'

"It solidifies you; your character and personality becomes concrete and unmouldable after the first few years of work. That is the point of definition of who you are," she'd use to tell me.

I am beginning to see the reality behind this truth. In this past year or two, every action that I have taken, every decision that I have made, I have had to learn to examine thoroughly the implications; not just on the consequences but on what it reflected of me and of my values. I have had to fight battles against Goliaths believing that what I was doing was the right thing. At times I won, others I lost; at times I've chosen not to fight. But they've all defined who I am.

And with the passing of days of which I reside here, I am inevitably 'solidifying' ... I see myself turninf into something I do not recognise and something I do not wish to be. At times I am complicit in the duplicity and hypocrisy that so characterises the system and the people that surround me ... because I have to. Is that what power is?

When I fight on moral grounds, I am deserted. I fight the winds that cannot be defeated. Often I feel I am fighting the air itself - that which overwhelms, surrounds, pervades and imposes.

Where is ethics and morality, the sense of right and wrong? Can we say for certain that an action we take is necessarily right? Can we be so certain and if we can't, what is there left to believe in? What am I doing as an educator? What can I do?