School hadn’t quite started yet as I stood at my door greeting students upon arrival as they began to fill the halls for the day. We are on block schedule and it was an A day. Tiffany, one of my B day students, walked up to me to return the markers that I let her borrow the day before to finish her black history poster at home. She shared with me how she finished her poster and that her mom hung it up on the wall because she was proud of it. I asked Tiffany if she was also proud of the work that she had done and she hesitated. She said, “Yes, but I could have did it better. I wanted to redo it.” I told her, “Be proud of yourself and what you accomplished. The goal is to continue to improve but you have to celebrate where you are right now even if it’s not where you want to be.” Per usual, I realized that I was talking to myself. She smiled, gave me a hug, and walked on to her homeroom class.
About an hour later I decided to take my homeroom class outside for the day. It was the first day that it had been warm enough all year to take them out. As soon as we got out there, “Mrs. Williams we don’t have a ball to play with!” Daylen and the other students complained to me and expressed that they didn’t have anything to do. Mind you 15 minutes prior they were excited just at the idea of going out. I asked, “So what are y’all gonna do? Are y’all gonna complain or figure out a solution?” A few minutes later they had moved over to the field area and were running as if they were playing football. I got a little closer and observed that they were using a water bottle in place of a football and having a blast doing so. The girls were playing too! They found contentment in what they had and made the absolute best of their time playing. I took notes but it wasn’t until around 5:00 am on this leap day morning that I really understood the lesson that I had been being presented with. A lesson in contentment.
What does contentment have to do with self-love? Everything for me. Here lately it dawned on me that I embody the woman that I once desired to be and that I have everything that I’ve ever truly wanted in life plus more than I could have even imagined. Yet and still in the midst of all of the great things that have been happening in my life, sometimes I find myself in a state of discontentment. I looked up the word discontentment in the dictionary and it was defined as “unhappiness caused by the failure of one’s hopes, desires, or expectations”. Ironically a few weeks ago a message from Spirit was for me to surrender my expectations. One of my God given gifts is being clairvoyant, I see things in the spiritual well before they happen in the physical. The problem that I’ve created with that is that there are times that I end up getting disappointed when what I see doesn’t happen exactly in the way that I pictured it. Often I allow my expectations of how I think life should be hinder me from enjoying and fully experiencing how life really is. If there was ever a downside to being a visionary, then this is it for me.
While the goal is to continue to learn, grow, and improve as I evolve into my greatest version, at the same time I must learn to be content with where I am on this journey right now. Not just today, but every day. In order to truly love self, I must appreciate this version of me as much as I love the fully evolved me, if not more than. The saying that my oldest son has been using lately, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset” holds new meaning for me now. Once again the children have given me a lesson needed for my soul’s advancement. Now that I am aware, I will work towards self-mastery of the art of contentment as I continue to love myself more. Thank God for the children.
Fictional names were used to protect the identities of my students.
