Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

Here in Florida it feels as though it has been raining for a solid month. While grumbling about this constant deluge, I remembered the six year old version of me first learning two key lessons about rain. Lesson number one: people pay a lot of attention to you, especially in a crowded place, if you put your curly hair in pigtails, smile, and sing the song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head"- just like your grandparents asked you to do. Lesson number two: old people seem to know a lot about the weather.

Since I am now just a few years beyond the age of six, it is probably a fine time to revisit what I know about rain (putting all the meteorological details aside). My current depth of understanding of lesson number one (pigtails, smile and crowd-pleasing singing) is still useful, but in a less literal sense. A child of six is unencumbered by the baggage of adulthood. Six year olds smile so easily and they can be talked into doing almost anything to please others, especially their grandparents. When I think back on those impromptu performances, part of me wants to express a nostalgic yearning for the simpler times of a bygone era, but quite frankly, I know it isn't the cheesy seventies that I miss. I miss my six year old world view.

The song "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" had a simple melody and lighthearted lyrics. The moral of the tune was somewhere close to this: 'you can't stop the rain by complaining, so choose to be happy now because the sun will soon return'. Regardless of the weather outside, we are are free to make ourselves feel sunny or rainy on any given day.

At six, you can make others feel sunny by singing a silly song out loud in an ordinary crowded place on an otherwise ordinary, perhaps gray day. As a grownup, you could still try that trick but someone might be tempted to call a doctor. Instead, my adult take-away from childhood lesson number one: Change the weather in your mind and turn yourself into a sun lamp for others. Do this not only because your singing voice might be one only your grandparents could love, do it because humanity's emotional climate matters more than any high or low pressure system blowing in from the west.

The modern relevance of childhood lesson number two: (old people know a lot about the weather) is simple. My mom and my grandparents used to sing a song called "You are My Sunshine" to me every time I saw them -until I was old enough to be embarrassed by this fact. As a little person of six, I truly believed I was that important to them. What I had partially forgotten in the many years in between six and now, was that the people you love really are worth singing about. It shouldn't be embarrassing and we should never be too busy to let each other know that we are, really, each other's sunshine. It is our job to weather storms, imagined or real, by keeping the inside lights on.

Wise old people know the difference between real sunshine, real rain, and the weather that comes and goes. While I am chronologically at a place where I should know this in both my heart and my head, I am still learning how to be consistent with the heart part, specifically how to truly enjoy singing in the rain. I know where to find the sunshine if I am not too busy looking outside. Where is Burt Bacharach when you need him? Or Gene Kelly for that matter? Or maybe I could use Rihanna's umbrella, ella, ella....

A Room with a View

As I sit here today with my Starbucks on my left and iPad on my right, I admit that I am an 'experience junkie'. Somewhere in my journey from childhood to my current self, it became critical for me to have 'atmosphere' in the smallest of things. What I now see, however, is that I often trade in 'manufactured' experiences while missing the real thing all together.

In looking at my craving for 'experiences', I came to three conclusions. First, coffee does not cost four dollars, but I am willing to pay that ridiculous price for a moment of 'me-time' just before work every day. Second, while I live less than a mile from the ocean, I am willing to pay for a vacation hotel room with a 'view' of the ocean, rather than dip my toes in it on any given day. Finally, third, I am willing to pay small fortunes to Target and Amazon to decorate my house like a madwoman for every holiday, in anticipation of enjoying quality family time therein, yet somehow the holidays come and go without enough memories to match the countless glittering light display spectacles.

My new assignment, as a result of this epiphany, is to stop decorating an imaginary experience and remember the value of living in a real one. A real one gets messy sometimes and not everything is in order. As a school leader, I have been tempted to solve countless problems while trapped in my office at my computer, with a mobile phone, an iPad and work line all buzzing and dinging at the same time. I host meeting after meeting to discuss quality experiences for the students while the very same wonderful students are celebrating a fiesta for Spanish class upstairs, or are in the courtyard reading to a specially trained dog, or are engaged in a debate on the national debt in the library. The lesson for me is calling as I finish typing this sentence.

Out of my office window, I see a group of high school students heading for the bus to leave for a college tour. One of those students is my sixteen year old son. I realize all too clearly that most of what I am busy orchestrating is simply happening around me with or without my planning. It is better to steal a moment at breakfast with my son, enjoying my 50 cent homemade coffee. It is better to go swimming in the ocean than to sit in an expensive room and look at it. And it is far better laugh with loved ones sans the glittering lights than to lose oneself in the details of an orchestration. While I will never leave all of the glitter, Starbucks or planning meetings behind, I will be sure to keep those things right where they belong- simply as window dressing to a beautiful day spent hand in hand with the people who matter most. Carpe diem!

Déjà Vu?

We're all familiar with the mixed bag of emotions that go hand in hand with the first day of school. It wasn't until yesterday that I truly understood my own particular good fortune with respect to this (for me) annually recurring event. I am lucky enough to work at a small school with a close-knit group of people. While on the phone with a parent, she noted, "Wow, you really get to do this first day of school thing forever, right?"

As we finished the conversation, I reflected on our typical first day pile of confused schedules, summer reunion hugs, car line headaches, uniform questions, lost backpacks, new-found friends, smiles and tears, only to realize that we 'school-folk' really do have a grand view of things. I'm making a bit of a cheesy connection to the actual name of our school (Grandview) but, obvious tactics aside, everything in life hinges on perspective. Every year I am lucky enough to view through a lens of new beginnings. Like Bill Murray's character in the decades ago film, Groundhog Day, I get to re-live moments over and over until I get them right; until I see and appreciate the perfect cycle of imperfection.

So, with this new year on this new day, I am polishing my rose-colored lenses to be sure they are aiming at the limitless potential we all share. In the process, I will think about Punxsutawny Phil and a question asked in the film, "Do you ever have déjà vu? Answer: Didn't you just ask me that?"