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I Want To Give Thanks

I am giving thanks for these slow days where my mind can finally rest.

For 22 years, I have worked. Getting up at 5 am and getting ready for a hectic day. Weekends filled with marking and months filled with exam preparations and logistics planning. 10-hour and 12-hour days were the norm. The responsibility of preparing batch after batch of students for the national exams and celebrating with them when they did well and crying with them when there were disappointments. Despite the exhaustion, every year-end, I tell myself it's worth it. I can go another year.

But not any more. I have worked until I almost burnt out. How does one know where the limit is? I think one just knows it implicitly. For me, the train has arrived at my platform and I need to get off. I see my colleagues on that train and I worry for them sometimes. The speed at which it hurtles is not for the faint-hearted.

My country has come in tops again, not for PISA this time 😝

http://theindependent.sg/singapore-ranks-as-second-most-overworked-city-in-the-world-study/

These days, I am more mindful of my life, of every breath I take, of every morsel of food I chew. There is no hurriedness. Only silent contemplation. I could go on like this for a long time.

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4meAndyou · F

My cousin was a school teacher also. She told me that she had no idea what a terrible toll it was taking on her, until she retired, and then she wondered what madness had possessed her, to work for sooo long. Unfortunately, she only had one year of retirement, then she slipped while both unloading her dishwasher and cleaning her oven, broke her leg, and died the day after I spoke to her last, of a pulmonary embolism.

novembermoon · 51-55

@4meAndyou that is so so sad. She worked for so long and had such a short time to enjoy her retirement. Sometimes I ask God why life can be so unfair. I had a colleague who had cancer and she worked until the very last day. No doubt she loved her job but the fact was that she needed rest. Yet at the end of 2017, beginning of 2018, when I last saw her alive, she was still walking to the classroom to make sure everything was in order the day before the children came back from their holidays. She was breathing heavily and the medicine smell on her was strong as we took the lift together. I did not know that would be the last I would see of her. She was only 34.

4meAndyou · F

@novembermoon I think you should say to yourself, Hmm...maybe I should retire a little bit early. Hmm?