mad, beautiful carousel

Life is spinning faster than I ever thought imaginable. My head is filled with thoughts of diversity, lesson planning, curriculum development, executing lessons effectively, collaborating properly, management and professional development, investment strategies and plans, shocking statistics. Life is a carousel – full of bright lights, pretty colors, excitement – and yet you can’t help but feel a little lost, a little sick at your stomach.


Each time the carousel makes a full rotation it seems to speed up just a bit more. As I tightly grip any steady objects I can find, the view continually changes. It passes beautiful outdoor scenes, dinner at sunset with good conversations and new found friends. It takes me past highways and freeways and falling down buildings. I love the silence and comfort I feel as I ride with the other passengers past the Houston skyline just as the sun, that bright orange ball, rises every day. No matter how fast or crazy the ride, I know each day…that sun is coming up. That sun lives to shine again, and I must also.


I haven’t seen them much, or returned many of phone calls, but the ones I love are here, in the background. Positive words, voices of affirmation, friends who check in and family who comforts.Their smiling faces as I try not to get thrown off this carousel keep my fingers from slipping off my grip.


This carousel I happily climbed on is stuck in the heat. In the wee hours of morning, in the darkness of night, all through the day – the heat presses in on us. It is unusually warm here, no rain, no relief. I wonder if this heat wave isn’t coincidence. It seems to represent the heat in my heart – the warmth is good, true. But intense heat, a burning of sadness, hope, and realization, can’t be good forever. I long for the days of naps and rain and simplicity. I long for rest.


But maybe there isn’t time for rest. These riders that I’m with, fellow souls clinging to and searching for sanity together a few weeks more – we are all on this ride to bring that rest to others. Our carousel wants fairness and equality for everyone. Our carousel knows that in the land of the free, some are not free. They are bound by the chains of their education – they cannot break free because it is a repeating cycle. They try hard. They bring energy and smiles every day. They are smart. But the system passes them to fourth grade before they have mastered simple addition.


They are bound by the chains of their education, and we are riding this mad, beautiful carousel so that we can break their chains. Though I feel on the brink of a meltdown sometimes, I have never felt quite so fulfilled, joyful, or blessed as I have in the last fifteen days. I think a little meltdown might do everyone some good. I find myself tilting my head to the sky, grabbing hold of a pole and dangerously hanging over the edge of the carousel as it spins round and round. Laughter fills the cracks of the brokenness. I have embraced the ride. That mad, beautiful, bright ride of the carousel – I am loving it.