Breakdown

A couple of weeks ago, one of my students left school early. Through a window. From the second floor. The teacher in the class at the time didn't even try to stop him, she was so surprised. Right in the middle of completing a worksheet, he calmly got up from his desk, opened the window, climbed the rail, and jumped. He injured his ankle in his mad dash for freedom and was absent from school for a while. When I returned to his school I saw him there and asked him why he did what he did and if he wanted to leave school early why didn't he just use the door and the stairs like all the other students. His answer? "I don't know." His goal obviously wasn't to kill himself, you'd have to be pretty frail to die after only a 15 foot drop (and he was a little on the hefty side).

In casual conversation with his teachers, I discovered that he was under extraordinary pressure. His grades were good, but not the best and his parents were driving him to go to the best high school in the city. He had juku (cram school) for hours on end almost every day (weekends included) and studied until he went to sleep at night, and his nights couldn't have been that restful because look what he's got to look forward to the next day. One Japanese student who actually fit the stereotype of a Japanese student. He had no time for himself, to himself. No "veg" time.

We've all touched upon that sort of strain at one point in our lives. Why, I can remember during my second year in college when I had six courses, three jobs, working 30-35 hours per week, and a girlfriend from hell, and I was pretty close then to my breaking point. Really close.

Human beings are amazingly resilient, but we're not perfect, we've all got 'em, limits. But we're always adding more and more onto our plate in life until it's one huge nauseating mess.

That's why I try not to use day planners. Because I know I'd just chock it full of impossible schedules, cram it full of things to do. Most times I go by the philosophy that if I can't remember to do something, it probably wasn't that important to begin with.

The other times, there's a part of me which gets frustrated with how much of my day is wasted with "down-time". This part of me thinks eating, showering, and especially sleeping is a total and complete waste of time. All that time could have been used to do something productive. You see, I've yet to fully realize that humans aren't machines. We need time in which we are doing nothing, or at least very little. Take some time out to meditate, read a book, or lay on the couch and count the bumps on the ceiling. RELAX!!

Would my student have been better off if he had watched the Simpsons or SouthPark once a day? Had some time set aside for hanging out with his friends or playing Nintendo for an hour? Probably. But it's a sure thing that that lifestyle would have gotten him in the end. Half of wisdom is knowing when your plate is full and having the courage to say so. When to say, "I've had enough".

The trick is getting to that wisdom before you find yourself jumping out of a window.

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