No One Sees the Same Rainbow
No one sees the same rainbow.
Your eyeballs see the light that is refracted through a water droplet. Red moves more slowly. Violet moves more quickly. Each water droplet makes the entire assortment of the visible color spectrum. Now, wouldn’t you like to kayak through a rainbow? How would you like to boof through an arc of happiness, sunshine, and water? Well, maybe you have, but you probably wouldn’t know it. Unless your friend saw you do it!
As a teacher, I constantly ask my students to become uncomfortable. I want them to struggle through an assignment or lab. I want them to find success through their effort. Good teachers implement assignments that allow for curiosity and uncertainty. I led three different lab experiences this past week. The depth of understanding was truly wonderful to observe. Kids were making observations and conducting experiments. Understanding the eye through dissection. Bending light with prisms. Learning how rainbows work.
However, there were failures. I made mistakes. The students made mistakes. At the end of the week, I felt mentally and physically drained from the effort of bringing the best possible science education to my students.
Saturday rolled around. I awoke to a rainy beautiful fogginess outside. Kayaking weather. There are few things better than a misty green creek with a little bit of rain. But I didn’t want to go kayaking. Something was off.
Kayaking can be quite stressful sometimes. I am at the caliber now where I sometimes enjoy running difficult whitewater. I can feel the fire build where I really just want to forget my worries and be here now in the splashy goodness of a rapid. Like a dream where you just bounce happily through a whitewater cornucopia of rainbows, sunshine, soft rocks, and fluffy waves. Not get out of my boat. Run it all.
However, I work. I give my all to my kids. I devote my time, my thoughts, my creativity, and my passion to my students. I feel lucky to be able to work with this type of joy and fulfillment. However, sometimes, but not all of the time, I feel like there is little left on the weekends to give to the river. This was one of these weekends.
I pushed myself out of my own comfort zone last weekend. I felt the same uncertainty and curiosity that I demand of my students. I ran a few rapids that I usually walk. I was imagining lines on rapids I have never ran. I was starting to feel the fire again.
While driving up to the river this weekend, I started to get nervous. I started to feel uneasy about those rapids I usually walk and those rapids I never run. I started to imagine failure. The stress made me not want to go kayaking. So instead, I took away the stress, but still went kayaking! I made the call to walk around these rapids that make me nervous, even though I know I have the skills to complete them successfully. I just wanted to have fun.
This call was rewarded by watching my friend Chris Baer (whereisbaer.com) boof through a rainbow that he never would have known was there. While he was concentrating on hitting his line, I saw his perfect boof stroke placed in the middle of an arc of effervescent misty color. This wonderful refraction of light was only seen by me. In the light of the green, the Green, I felt a wave of happiness, fulfillment, and peace with the complexity behind one simple choice. To walk? Or to charge? Either way, you will be happy, and maybe one day you will boof through a rainbow!