It’s amazing how unchanging our perspectives can be over time. I had a chance yesterday to see how revisiting some details from my past could give me a new perspective and understanding of a situation.
Yesterday I got to reminisce at a party with a classmate from my childhood days, who I hadn’t seen in 30 years. This person was not a close friend of mine at that time, but a neighbor who lived just up the street from me. It was great to see her, and as we talked, the evening slipped away and back to grades 3 to 12.
We shared stories — some of them unknown to each other, and some of them shared experiences from different perspectives.
As with all childhood reminiscing we revisited the chance to laugh about our teachers, like our highly-strung languages teacher who couldn’t keep control of the class. This teacher had been an easy target for mischief making.
As one of the guys in the class I remember many times speaking out of turn and working hard, not at languages, but at making the class laugh. I recounted how some friends found mushrooms in the schoolyard, and ran around pelting each other, as well as this teacher.
A new fact I learned last night was that this teacher liked shoes and had extra pairs in her car. The girls in the class would sometimes find her car unlocked, and stack the shoes on the dashboard – giving again the message “We don’t like you”.
I hadn’t thought about this teacher in a long time, and I realized, with a new perspective of compassion, that this teacher was the subject of a lot of ridicule by her students. It made me sad, and I wished that I and my classmates had acted differently at the time.
Everyone knows that children don’t have the full picture. What is surprising is how even adults, who know there must be more to any story, can still maintain the same perspective we had as children.
I think we do learn from our past mistakes, and for me, revisiting the pain inflicted on a teacher has given me a renewed intention to be kind to those in my life.