School Doesn't Teach That!

I really love today's prompt of Jenni's "Blog Every Day In May"-challenge: Things you've learned that school won't teach you.

I appreciate that I had the chance to go to school in Germany, but still there are plenty of skills that no school will be able to teach you. The greatest skill life taught me is patience.

I've never been a patient person. I'm a planner, doer, and control freak. If there's an issue, I'll go and fix it. Until I encountered the first major obstacle, when there was nothing for me to do but wait. Needless to say, that didn't go well; it's embarrassing to mention, but tantrums ensued that would have made every toddler proud.

And thanks to the Army, there were plenty of occasions to practice patience. Waiting for orders, waiting for appointments at the on-post hospital, waiting for the hubby to come home.

And once we finally received our ETS orders, I got to keep learning: waiting for the call back after a job interview, waiting on the decision whether we would get the apartment, and most recently, waiting on our building permit.

There are times, when the learning process is difficult. When the uncertainty causes me having panic attacks and insomnia, but I have learned methods to cope. I have learned that there are things I cannot influence, and freaking out won't help a thing. So I need to distract myself, even if it's hard in the beginning. I have learned how to calm myself actively through meditation and breathing techniques.

I have to admit, I am almost thankful for all the challenges, because it helped me acquire a skill that helps me whenever I have to leave my comfort zone: being patient, wait without freaking out and driving the hubby up the wall by running around like crazy, trying to do something, no matter how senseless it is. Patience to focus my energy on enjoying my time with my family, give the best I can at work, and don't waste my time on worrying and generally freaking out.

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Of Energy And Life

Many years ago I read a book called "The Calestine Prophecy". I can best describe it as a mid-90 New Age Indiana Jones, if that makes any sense. As most New Age stuff, it is full of fairly wacky ideas, but definitely had some very substantial concepts. The principle of treating even small kids like individuals, and not as semi-persons appealed to me even when I first read this book as a teenager. One concept I've been thinking about a lot lately is that of the struggle for aura or life force. At first, I put this one in the wacky category, until I recently went through my old room, and found said book. Over the next days, this idea just kept going through my head. Not just as it was described in the book, with actually seeing an aura, but just the way the effects are described, that most people are constantly struggling to gain this life force in so many different ways. Just think about it: Have you ever walked away from an argument feeling better about yourself because you know that the other person feels bad now? I hate to say it, but I have, and it really scares me and makes me feel like a bad person. Lately, I have felt a lot on the other end of this struggle. Whenever I am with my family in close contact for a longer time, I feel completely drained. I feel belittled and pushed around, like a little kid. Sometimes it even seems as if I can feel the energy being drained from me.

Usually, I am someone who can easily stand up for herself and is very independent. But around my family I am suddenly reduced to a person who has brains but little other skills. The daughter who is the bad driver, is not musical, or any good at handy skills. From our teenage time on, these skills were attributed to my sister, to build up her ego since she failed in most of her schooling. I battled major issues, spent years in therapy for various eating disorders, because this seemed the only way for me to take some control over my life, took anti-depressants, and finally pulled myself out of the swamp after moving out to go to college and being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. During my first year in college I gave up therapy and medications and decided to accept me for the person I am, with my sadness and everything else. A little over a year later I met someone, who was almost scarily much like me, with a similar background and attitude to our problems; five months later we were married. We are soul mates, since we never have to explain how we feel, and because we know what to do if the other one feels down. And for the first time I really realized what it means to do what the book describes as sharing aura. Instead of struggling for this life force by trying to make the other one feel bad about him- or herself, we support each other unconditionally. Without any expensive therapies or medications we lifted each other out of our depressions and became stronger individuals within our unit.

Now, as parents, we are determined to raise our daughters to be strong individuals; we love them for who they are, with their strengths and weaknesses. We are strong enough as parents to not feed off our children, but to nourish them to strive. I am so proud to see Lily growing to be this wonderful, independent girl, so full of energy and life, even though it is sometimes draining. Violet has a much different personality, but we can definitely see, that she will be confident as well. We agree that we will support our children equally in their interests and will not hold them back in their potential. Who knows, maybe the tone-deaf klutz that's me will one day play the piano with the girls...