Get digging or get going.

On the back of seeing Resilience: The Bilogy of Stress & The Science of Hope you come away feeling an enormous burden of responsibility, tempered by a healthy serving of resignation/futility at the uphill struggle that so many people face when “getting through this thing called life.”

As a class teacher it’s easy to see the challenges and overlook the opportunities: To bandy round gripes about insufficient funding and the trials of inclusion.*

But we need to be more positive or at least suggest solutions. 

I like to think I’m generally a pretty positive person who doesn’t go looking for problems. Who deals with what he has, makes the most of the scant resources he has to hand and takes the approach that if you can do something to solve a problem, do it; if you can’t, don’t bang on about it.

Perhaps I haven’t been on the block long enough to see the same old things come around again and have insufficient history against which to compare the present. I do find the mantra of “we’ve known about this for years; how’s this ‘new’?” really quite tedious. If it’s being spoken about now, it’s because whatever was implemented before, didn’t work, and besides, inaction is hardly a bold step to solving things.

There’s an old proverb of unknown origin which suggests that the best time to plant an oak tree was 20 years ago; the next best time is now. 

Well, the oaks of yesteryear have been blown down so I suggest we all get planting. If you can’t  be bothered to do the digging, give someone else your spade.

Incidentally, the film was enlightening but I’d say that you get as much bang for you’re buck from Nadine Burke Harris’ (@DrBurkeHarris) TED talk which you can find here.

*not my words!