Tiny Bells 🌠

 

Last week I shared how each semester concludes with students writing letters to me. This is their final. I ask them to include the quote de jour as a touchstone to write about. This year's quote was by Ralph Waldo Emerson (see 12/9/20). I invited them to reflect on all life as an experiment, timidity, getting fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice, and Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble? 

What do you think of this? How does it relate to your own life? Letter writing for me has always been personal, revelatory, and inspiring for writer and reader. 

Tell me what you think.I'll write back. 

I do, to each and every student - with pleasure. 

_______________________________

It's our final exchange of ideas. 

Here's a few gems among many:

My attitude about life is I do not take life seriously; I take serious moments in life seriously. I try things, I make mistakes, and I take action because I feel life truly is an experiment and I want it to be the biggest, fun, and exciting experiment I could have ever lived so that later in life I can look back and say I am glad I did. Emerson is right because you cannot know in advance what will happen through your actions. You can only plan and then take action. - Meghan 

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Failure has never been part of the plan...That being said, I am working on seeing life as an “experiment”. I am trying each day to come to terms with the fact that I may have to be a little lenient with the paths I take to have this dream life of mine. Failure was a negative thing in my household, when in reality, failure just means you have tried. - Morgan 

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And this, from Ann. Returning student, thirty-nine year old mother of four children, a woman who as a first-grader had to translate at parent-teacher conferences for her Spanish-speaking mother. "I always translated the truth," she said. This semester Ann was inducted into the Honor Society on campus:

I failed. I failed. I failed. I failed. I failed and I kept failing until I got tired of failing; then I wanted to win, win for my children, win for my husband, win to glorify God and win for the first-grade kid who had to figure it out on her own. This is my academic redemption story. 

So now, after years of giving up on myself, I decided to wear my F with pride because it was how I started and I can’t forget it. I won’t forget it and I definitely wear my children down with my story. I lived it; they don’t have to. I failed at it, they cannot. I know English. I know how sweet success is and I’m hooked. The old mindset is gone, it was toxic. I’m healed. I’m ready. - Ann 

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Morgan concluded that Failure just means you have tried. 

                                                                                        

And with that, I heard tiny bells ringing in my head.

xo b

Moon and Sun by Claire Collins