I was on a long road trip yesterday, driving 14 hours from Houston to St. Louis. It rained about 90% of the trip, pouring buckets from the grey gloomy clouds overhead as I made my way north. Stopping for a short break at a Rest Area in the middle of Arkansas, I ran from my car through the puddles to get inside. On the way out, I saw these flowers. I briefly thought, if it wasn’t pouring, I’d get my camera out because that pink color is amazing. I went back to my car, climbing in half soaked.
Looking through the clouded windshield, I could see the flowers were still there. In the rain. Waiting for me to grab my camera and come back.
I found an umbrella, to keep my camera dry, popped on my long lens, and darted over to the flowers. There I stopped and focused on nothing else. It was just me, my camera, and the pinkest pink of all pinks among the greenest of greens, dotted with raindrops.
I stopped noticing that the rain was pouring on me, but instead noticed that the rain was sprinkling the flowers with beautiful little drops. Dotting the blooms and creating light bubbles along the stems.
Nothing is ordinary, I thought. Those pink flowers? They were hope. Waiting in the gloom. Covered in shiny dots dancing in the daylight. And I almost didn’t see them because I was too focused on the rain. A rain I can’t control.
When we look around our classrooms and our schools, what are we consumed by? There is so very much we cannot control. Things that pour down on us like rain on a highway. That cover us and weigh us down. But there is so much more. There are bright spots there, waiting to be recognized. Beautiful little spots of hope. Eyes open, we walk by hope every day, passing without notice, failing to make that choice to really see.
There is so much hope in our students, in our work that we do together, in the change that is coming little by little. In the words we speak, the moments we share, and the joy in learning. It’s all there. Hope that can so easily get buried if we allow it to.
But just as easily, we can make a decision to see the little spots of hope. Whether they are glaring pink in the midst of a grey gloomy day, or a light in a kid’s eye when he hugs us and tells us he had fun learning today, it’s hope. And, it’s a choice.
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