One of the best parts about teaching at a community college is meeting so many new people at the start of every semester. Seeing familiar faces is gratifying too. Beginnings of the semester are great, what a colleague of mine used to call "the honeymoon period." As the semester moves forward, some of those students will become more committed to their studies and find their talents and capacities for sustained work will take them even further in life than they imagined. Others will begin to waiver and face self-doubt. It's striking to see that failure comes from within, from fear that overtakes students able to accomplish the tasks, yet unable to see themselves as successful. I could almost agree with Hamlet that the mind is its own place, able to make a heaven of hell and vice versa when I experience the same kind of self-criticism that is destructive, rather than helpful.
Each day requires belief of some kind for envisioning happiness as ours. We enter into circumstances that only appear to shape us, when in fact, it's our response to what's happening to us that shapes our characters and our destinies. If we are to see the seeds blossom, to move from beginnings to happy endings, we must look within to find a love and compassion for ourselves and others that is greater than our self-doubt, our fears, and all our worries about what might happen if we're not "good enough."
No, we don't simply choose. We abide, take root, grow, and discover our true self in that larger self that is divine and more capable and consistently present in caring for us than we can ever be. Receiving grace daily nourishes and provides strength to meet challenges as they come. Generative, constructive, creative power lifts our hope, which does not fail.
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