lunes, 21 de noviembre de 2011

Do You Accept Reality Cheques?

It's one in the morning. My partner and toddler are snoozing together, and it's blog time:

I had come home tonight grumpy and depressed; I have a small group of teenage girls whom I had bawled out this evening for failing to participate in class, and I was already mentally composing my rant/moan/cry-for-help on the road home: How can I get them to apply themselves? How do other people find time to read blogs, never mind write them? Why can't I find anything about teaching YL on the net? Why is everybody on my PLN brighter and better and faster than me?

(I wish I could remember which novelist wrote something about the shiny moon-face of self-pity.)

Recently, I've only had the time to speed-read my EFL blogs, not any of the others that I follow. My mistake. But tonight while waiting for the computer to update, I finally got round to them.

While I'm moaning about a slightly scatty group of girls, other people are organising their Christmas in November because they might not still be alive a month later.

And still others are passing on timeless wisdom:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.

Guess who said that?

So thanks again, not just EFL bloggers, but to all the rest of you for the bigger picture.

Oh and Brad's pics were pretty refreshing, too.

5 comentarios:

  1. Too true Alan, and you know I have a constant reminder of this right in my family...
    It's good to want to be better, but the two people snoozing in the bedroom will be able to tell you you are perfect as you are! Perspective IS a great thing.. maybe you could get your scatty group of girls to work on that? xxx Tizi

    ResponderEliminar
  2. Thanks my dear.

    Isn't it funny how a family will drive you mad and keep you sane at the same time.

    A huge hug to you and all the tribe.

    ResponderEliminar
  3. Jon Bon Jovi?

    I only ask because I did a training session at work recently and found this quote that sounded really inspirational, but was in fact said by the aforementioned Jovi. I set everyone the challenge of guessing who'd said the magical words, and after about a quarter of a second someone shouted out 'Jon Bon Jovi.'

    What can I say, the man's genius is more widespread than I'd realized.

    ResponderEliminar
  4. Bon Jovi? A true Renaissance man.

    It'd be foolish to rule him out, but I'm willing to bet that I read it in a novel set in post-war London, I think by a female British novelist.

    It may also have contained the sentence "This ain't a song for the broken-hearted."

    ResponderEliminar
  5. I read it in The New York Times (29 March 1972) and The New York Post (28 November 1972). ;-)

    ResponderEliminar