JADED

‘I just wanna get my paycheck and get out of here’, my son overheard one of his teachers tell another teacher today.

‘I’ve never heard a teacher say that’, he continued. Yet, he understood how that can happen as people get older and get stuck in a job they no longer enjoy.

It was our first day back to school and work in this new year. There was a knock at the door shortly past noon. It was too early for lunch, I thought. It was my son.

He had come home during lunch, not having anywhere else to go. It was only later, when he showed up at the regularly scheduled lunch, that he realised he had mistakenly taken the earlier lunch.

It was also the first day of my son having a new teacher for his World History class. A teacher he seems to like because ‘he’s young and doesn’t hate his job yet’, as my son explained. Apparently, the teacher had just graduated from college and this is his first teaching job.

After having been on an almost two-week long ‘impromptu’ vacation in England, we dreaded having to return to the place we call home. Sad to leave such a beautiful snowy countryside and the slower pace of life we enjoyed. But we have thoughts of returning.

The snowy countryside of Bakewell, England

It’s easy to get jaded. As we age, we lack the enthusiasm we once had when we started out in life after school. We get bored and disgruntled with the work we are doing, as we realise it is only a means to an end. We feel hopeless at the thought that things will never change and we will end up not living the life we envisioned for ourselves when we were younger.

Whilst the children are still young enough to map out their futures, it is a bit more difficult for me to plan a life elsewhere. A life where time seems to stand still. Where people do not have to rely on cars for transportation. Where we can walk every day to shops to buy food for one or two days instead of driving all over the city for three hours to three different shops to gather ingredients for a week. A life of serenity.

Somehow, I will find a way.