Choose Kind

We all have bad days and bad weeks, and this week for me would have qualified as one of those weeks. It was a uniquely difficult discipline week at Hutchings where decisions about where students learn best and who can teach the replacement behaviors or rebuild friendships for our students the best. On top of that, we had some interesting situations that we had to problem solve through on the spot and in the moment. (Which our teams did very well!) To add to this, personally, I was sporting a 100-degree fever most of the week and couldn’t breathe very well, my wallet went missing and I had to cancel all my credit cards and freeze my bank cards as well, so I've been operating this week with 20 bucks. My basement flooded with fecal matter when my neighbor decided to flush a plastic bag down her toilet, and when the homeowners association came instead of knocking he opened the door quickly and my dog decided this was his time to run away.

As I was wading through the brown water to get to the pipe, I started to laugh about the idea that this would make a really good “knee deep” joke later in life, and it was at this point in my head I had to make a decision. I could be extremely bitter about the week or I could be happy about the week.

I remember when I was in the Olympic Development Program for soccer a mom approached a coach and started to scream at this guy because he made her son upset. He looked at the lady and said, “It isn’t my job to make your son happy, that is a choice he has to make, we can help him find the path to it but he has to walk it.” She didn’t like that answer all too much, but as a 15-year old, I did.

We all have people we need to lean on for support and we all have people who lean on us for support. In the video Randall has great parents, his father supports him beyond a shadow of a doubt as does his mother. At the end of the video, Randall makes a choice to be happy he controls the path that he walks down. So as I reached the pipe to stop the poop from coming into my basement I remembered that I have a fantastic staff who supports me and I hope they know I support them as well. I choose to view this week as a win, our students are happy and learning, my house is standing, my dog is home safe, bank cards are replaceable, this cold will go away, and I realised yet again, that I work with fantastic people.

Choose Happy.

Choose Kind.

Tim