mistakes – hannah ananas

Amazing

Sometimes, I forget that I am an amazing person. I forget that I am talented and learnèd to a spectacular degree. I forget that my existence is an absolute blessing from God, both to me and to the world at large. (I truly think we all are this, though in incredibly different ways in life. However, that is not my current point.) You see, I get a bit worn out or lost, and so get behind on things, and I end up not giving my usual best for something. I take care of my physical well-being instead of giving my all to a certain time-sensitive project. I then, of course, give a completely acceptable and, even, great result on whatever that project is. However, I know that I certainly could have done better on it, much better than I did. I had, though, prioritized something else above it – myself and my ability to continue functioning as a whole, avoiding breakdown and wear-out. If, then, somebody happens to mention almost anything about that project, I immediately feel dreadful. Oh, dear, I’ve been caught being lazy. I knew I shouldn’t have given any less than my all on it.

But then, if, at the time, my all would have gotten me home sick afterward, what benefit would it have been?

Okay, so, let’s suppose I did the work ahead of time…., when there was no clear need for me to do it at all…. That just doesn’t make sense.

Well, so, here I am, stressed that I’m not doing a good enough job teaching. I didn’t prepare things ahead of time, because I didn’t want to do so, and they had no direct use in my life. Now, I am here. I did not do as great a job as I could have done on some – many – things so far this school year. Got it. That annoys me.

…….

And so, I sit here, feeling like crap about my teaching and myself – because I didn’t do it right, the best way. Okay, got it. However, just because I did one thing not spectacularly doesn’t make me a failure, doesn’t mean I’m failing my students. We can always do things better as a teacher – any teacher knows that. For now, I must accept the restraints I have had, or I will go nuts. I was limited on time, energy, and quick memory (It’s been a while for some of the topics, you see.), as well as the level and adaptability of my students. I chose to do things a certain way on purpose. I chose them, because I am a great teacher. Yes, I could have done a better job. That’s for next time. That’s for next class. That’s for tomorrow.

And, you know what? I’ve already set up the great stuff for tomorrow, and planned when to manage everything for the day after that and after that.

It’s okay not to be perfect at something, even though we are amazing at it. Even in dance – I am a highly trained and quite spectacular partner dancer, you see – I make mistakes. But, I think it is about how we recover from the mistakes that shows how spectacular we truly are. So, yes, I might have made some mistakes with things with classes so far this semester. Okay. Now, how do we move forward powerfully from those mistakes and from where we currently find ourselves? That is what matters most.

Huh… I don’t feel so lost in misery anymore… Yes, I’m a bit anxious about getting those things all done now that I want to do. But no, I don’t feel like I’m in trouble or have messed up horribly. Someone shall come observe my class next week, and it is going to be amazing…, because, even though I forgot it recently, I am amazing and I am an amazing teacher. God has blessed me greatly in this realm, and I’m ready to set flame to the world of my classroom. (Which, the students have already told me that I already have…, even though I had to ask them what they even meant, because I had felt like I was totally failing them as a teacher… They, however, were adamant that I had so far been the best teacher they had ever had in the subject… Pretty darn cool, huh? That’s the kind of thing I forget so often. I get lost in my head about having not done my best, and forget that even my not-best is still purty darn good.)

Thank you, God and Universe, for such a blessing in this life. Guide me to continue to be an expression of your love in the world, especially through my teaching and creativity. Amen.

Post-a-day 2021

late-night chatter

Tonight, I share an exchange I had with my mother on the late-night ride home tonight, as a sort of appetizer for what is to come soon regarding mistaken words spoken aloud:

Mom: “[…] and I had several many [phone] calls…”
Hannah: “How many calls did you have?”

And then we both totally cracked up as she tried desperately to answer, but couldn’t even get the whole word several out, and I commented that she had clearly used the quantification of the phrase ‘huge big’.

Post-a-day 2018

Table Troubles

We spent a good chunk of today at or around the international airport, but it was actually a really good day. One of the best parts was the delightful misunderstanding at lunchtime.

Now, to understand the significance of part of it, you must first know what happened yesterday. My mom, my stepdad, my stepsister and her boyfriend, and I went to lunch at a restaurant in The Galleria. My mom and stepdad went in first, while we kids went to look at a Lamborghini just outside the doors. When we filed into the restaurant, we saw them heading up the stairs, and followed. They told us up top that the waitress downstairs had told them to pick a seat anywhere, and had specifically mentioned that whether upstairs or downstairs was of no importance – it was open seating.

However, a waitress was rather snotty with us when we mentioned this upstairs, after asking kindly if a certain table could be wiped down before we sat down at it. She declared that we needed to check in with the hostess (but would not help us find the hostess, even when we asked kindly) and that there was a wait time, and we could not pick our own seats.

About two minutes after finding the hostess, we were seated at the table we had originally found (and then requested). And the guy setting the table was unfathomably slow, leaving us all standing, watching, as he finished setting the flatware. (Not sure why anyone was bringing us to a table that wasn’t ready yet, but it just made us laugh at how ridiculous it all was.)

We were quite nice to everyone, keeping always in mind the fact that it was a holiday and that we were grateful for their being there. A good handful of the people at this place seemed just ready to throw things at people for the simple defiant act of existing. Nonetheless, we got our table and, eventually, food and all, and it was a good time all-in-all.

Now, fast forward to today, lunchtime. We found a Mexican place that was near the airport – and I mean Mexican, not Tex-Mex, and not non-Mexicans who claim to have Mexican food and whatnots – and was open. My stepdad went in first, while we all parked the car. My mom, my stepsister and her boyfriend, and I all walked in in a row as another family was leaving, excusing ourselves in Spanish as we bumped paths and all (I meant it, when I called it a Mexican place.). As I walked in behind my mom, I saw my stepdad standing next to a table just two over from the door. He said that the lady told him that we could sit there, but he was going to the bathroom now.

So, we all slide into the booth and begin discussing whether there might be bleach in the cleaner (because the table was still damp from being cleaned and smelled a bit of bleach, but my mom had on black long-sleeves, and so wanted to be cautious about touching the table, if there were bleach in the cleaner), when a lady comes to our table and, in English, apologizes, but this table is already for another family. Could we please wait just a minute over here?

I turned to my mom, and asked her what their deal was with tables right now, and she could hardly fathom it herself, giving a genuine I have no idea. So, we stand up, the boyfriend telling the lady in Spanish not to worry and that we were completely okay. We wait to the side for perhaps 45 seconds. Then, the lady tells us that, okay, you can sit in this booth (the one just next to where we had sat down, and that was almost exactly the same). So, we sit, and comment how it is drier that the other table was. I sniff the table, and my stepsister fusses at me not to do so, but I explain that I was merely smelling for bleach, and she laughs.

My stepdad eventually returns, someone comes and takes our drinks orders (in Spanish, of course), and then the original lady comes to take our drink orders. I notice passively that no one ever sat at the table next to ours. We tell her that someone already had done so, but we are ready to make our food orders, however (all in Spanish, of course). Then, before taking our food order, as she looks at all of us, she says something surprising.

Apparently, since she spoke to my stepdad in Spanish originally, it was a non-compute that the rest of us would be the family with him. Though the boyfriend is from Mexico, he has blue eyes. I am dirty blonde and blue-eyed, and my mom is sort of a brown-haired, brown-eyed, older version of me. My stepsister just kind of blended in with us, since we were the majority look of our little group. So, we were the foreigners, so to speak, and clearly weren’t the family of the original guy who’d asked for the table a few minutes ago. She didn’t explain all of that, of course. We deduced that. But she did say (in Spanish) that she had thought that we did not belong to the gentleman to whom she had given the table, and so she told us that the table was taken by someone else. But, upon seeing that that same gentleman was at the new table, she realized her mistake. So, she apologized for it a few times, and we all enjoyed a good laugh at the whole thing.

No one ever ended up sitting at the table behind us, until the last few minutes that we were there, when a single man sat down to wait for someone or something briefly (so it seemed).

So, those were our adventures with table miscommunications this week.

Post-a-day 2017

Dancing is a global language

Tonight, I was reminded of a speech I recently wrote for a speech contest. No, I was not even a finalist in the contest (Speculation has informed me that previous years’ finalists had all tied in somewhere, somehow, that Japan is amazing and totally the best place ever. Seeing as mine has none of that in it, guess I had no chance at all, if that actually is a factor in the contest.), and I’m okay with that. It wasn’t my best work, though it was a decent run for a rushed 45 minutes (including editing with a friend) around 10:30 on a Wednesday night, and on a topic I felt could have been significantly better stated (“Anything that deepens global understanding, other than political, religious, or commercial themes”).

I’ve put the speech below, however, let me say why I thought of the speech. I ended up going dancing tonight, as a follow-up to a bizarre sending off for a friend (literally ran up to the friend on the street, walked the three minutes to the station, and parted ways), because I didn’t want to have spent $15 and an hour and a half for only four minutes of moderate enjoyment, and I neither had other plans for the evening nor work in the morning.

While at this dance thing, I delighted in the constant flow of English-to-French-to-Japanese-to-Frech, the forever exchanging of dance partners, and the true enjoyment of our unity and opportunity for us all to be together and at such ease. As a group, we have little else in common when you remove the dancing. But it is something we each learned in our home towns and cultures, which has now brought us together from many places around the world (really, I think we almost all were from different places, although some were just from different parts of Japan). And, even though we might never have come to know one another in any other part of life, we still ended up spending time together as though we were some of the best of friends.

I had met most of these people only once or twice, but that is the power of partner dancing. We work together in an intimate yet comfortable setting, one-on-one, to create something beautiful. We help each other learn, and we share what we have learned with one another. It’s like the best kind of school, in dance form.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that for now, so I leave you with my speech here:

My name is Hannah, and I do partner dancing. Every dance competition, I am terrified walking out onto that dance floor – “I am going to mess up! And in front of all of these people!” I cry inside my head. But, every time, I dance anyway. I give it my best, knowing that I will make mistakes (which I do), and I have an amazing time. Not to mention, I regularly place and even win the contests. Every single time I am grateful that I danced, even though I was terrified, but especially because I made loads of mistakes. Why? Because that is who I am. I am a beautiful, confident dancer who makes mistakes all the time. And every time I do make mistakes, I work with my partner to use them, and to transform them into something beautiful and intentional. We do the same when my partner makes mistakes, too. We work together to turn something accidental and potentially dangerous into something intentional, unique, and beneficial to the overall dance. When we do this, we each learn how the other responds to errors, as well as how to adapt ourselves to work with those responses. By the end of our three-to-four minutes together, we move flawlessly – any onlooker might think we had been partners for years. Why? Because we worked together on something difficult, ever listening to one another.

Marianne Williamson, an American writer, said that ‘our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate’, but that ‘we are powerful beyond measure.’ When we allow ourselves to make mistakes, we are opening up the doors that have been holding us back in life, and we give ourselves the chance to become greater than we ever expected, by learning something new about ourselves and about those around us. When I make a mistake dancing, I not only learn how I respond to error, but also how my partner responds to my making the error. Plus, my partner learns how I respond to error. Then, when we both work together to resolve the issue, we learn new ideas from each other, and we grow together, becoming more efficient and more powerful as individuals and as a couple.

So, what does this have to do with deepening global understanding? Every time I travel, I feel a sense of solitude and of being completely lost in this new world around me. And every time I go dancing in this new place, I not only feel at ease, but part of this new world around me. Every time it is terrifying. Not because I suspect it to go poorly, but because I know that there is no limit to how amazing an experience it can turn out to be. I have lived in various countries these past several years, and every time some of my best friends have come out of dancing. Why? Because not only do we love dancing, but we regularly make mistakes together, and we always work together to solve them. And, in the process of making these friends, I have learned through them more about their culture than any class or book could have taught me.

In conclusion, if you want to deepen your understanding of the world, and better it through understanding one another, and learning from mistakes together, I invite you all to dance. Thank you.

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Oops: Thank You, Teacher

As I showered just now, I somehow recalled a video meme I recently saw via a friend on Facebook. I didn’t much like it, and found it a poor use of such a great clip, but I’ve remembered it nonetheless. The words were along the lines of “when you just barely make your paper deadline”. The clip was Captain Jack Sparrow gliding perfectly onto the dock, as his ship disappeared under the water, sunk.

For whatever reason, this reminded me of the time in college when I did not make a sort of deadline.

It was my second year, in the Fall semester, and for one of my French classes. I think I had planned out studying for the test, and things had come up rather last-minute, completely destroying my study plan. It was probably a combination of that and the usual heart’s tug of ‘Let’s get distracted by everything other than studying.’

So, I found myself cramming desperately the night before and the morning of this test. I eventually just looked at myself, called it all ridiculous, and checked my teacher’s office hours. She would be in her office the half hour before class, which was not long from now. I kept studying, though in a completely different mood. Either I would get what I was dearly hoping to get, or I’d likely fail the test. And I could handle either (though I certainly had a preference).

I arrived at her office with an inner nervous, sweaty hands kid residing in my stomach, and a true sense of ease at what I was about to do.

I told her quite openly that I, by full fault of my own, was utterly unprepared to take the test today. Yes, I could come to class and take it, but it would create a waste of her time in grading it, as it would be filled with various levels of nonsense. I requested that she allow me to take the test later in the week instead, and asserted that I accepted any removal of points from my grade, should she see it necessary.

And she agreed. She asked – seeing as how I went to a fabulous school, where teachers actually get to know you as a person, and their care for you shows unfailingly – about whether something specific had happened, if I were all right, or if it were just a standard ‘Oh. My. Gosh. I messed up!” (Yes, I did make it clear that my situation was of the not-so-proud “Oops” category when she initially asked.), and then accepted my request to take the test later. I believe we agreed upon Friday, so that she still could grade it and give it back with the others on Monday… something like that, anyway. (I then rushed back home and resumed studying for the next two-ish days.)

I think that experience – although I’m not sure I’ve thought this until now – had a strong impact on how I handled students as a teacher. I remembered always that students have lives outside of the classroom, and that my class was not always the most important part of life for my students (and not simply by the students’ decision, but by global agreement), which sometimes meant that assignments went forgotten one night.

Essentially, I always expected the best of my students, and I remembered that they were only human. And, so far as the grading went, if they cared enough to admit their error and to make the request for an extension or redo, as I had done in college, then, so long as the situation were doable, I was willing to accept (or negotiate for acceptable terms). My students all knew this. They also knew that I accepted humanness, not laziness, and that I am an expert at distinguishing the two (slash knowing when they’re totally full of it). 🙂

Yeah, I love teaching. It’s like being a parent, but you get to kick them out whenever they’re driving you nuts. (I was about to say ‘And the spending money on them and feeding them part,’ but then I remembered that we actually constantly spend money on students, and I almost daily, if not hourly, shared my food with kids. One student regularly popped into my room throughout the day one year, asking for food. Good times. Good times.)

I feel like this went a little tangent-to-tangent (whatever that means), but that’s okay. So rolls my brain, eh?* 😀

*I’m not even Canadian. I just like the sound of that

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Afraid of Greatness (in Language) (Really?)

I recently have been terrified of learning and using the Japanese language. Why? Because I am terrified of the millions of mistakes I know will ensue the moment I attempt to use anything beyond a small “Ohayou,” or “Konnichiwa,” (which I already happen to mess up regularly).

What is it that has me be afraid of these millions of little mistakes, which I have make thousands of times before with other languages?

Truly, I believe it is because I know what happens when I make mistakes. When I make a mistake, firstly, I am opening myself up, making myself vulnerable to all those around me; secondly, by being open and vulnerable, I am allowing myself a chance to learn more about who I truly am, what I have inside. And, frankly, I’m terrified of what I might find. Not because I think what I might find is bad. Certainly not. But because, as the beautiful words of Marianne Williamson said, my deepest fear is not that I am inadequate, but that I am powerful beyond measure. What if, by opening up, making mistakes, and throwing myself into learning Japanese, I finally discover what I want to do with my life, and I go and do it?

How amazing would that be?

And, thus, how terrifying.

I'm part of Post A Day 2016