I’m so tired of it – not the word, the concept. I’m not sure if it is because of some prevailing zeitgeist that we – and when I say that, I probably mean ‘I’ – are (am) plagued with true-life stories of people who have overcome thousands of odds, worked all the hours God gives, pushed on through the seemingly never-ending and deeply frustrating and debilitating hardships to arrive at some place that makes them feel triumphal and the rest of us blessed and privileged to be inhabiting the same planet. And there are the worthy-celebrants who say it all for us – take the very words out of our mouths: “Isn’t she MARvellous!”, “What an inspiration!”, “If only everyone had that attitude!”, “You have restored my faith in whatever!” Ringing applause and awe-struck looks abounding as groveling and robe-touching threaten to subsume the new luminary. Tra-la and so on ad nausea – m.

I remember, many years ago back in the days when I taught English Literature in a high school, going to one of those ghastly “team-building-get-the-most-out-of-your-staff-and-optimise- their- futures-and -their -job- satisfaction- by -making- them- play- daft- games- and- use- a- lot- of- coloured- markers- to -draw -their- “ideal- self” events. The jolliness and energy and back-slappery and bonhomie was unnerving, to say the least. Then we all rallied around making SMART objectives and cheering each other on, being very, very positive and very,very motivated and very, very bright-eyed rowdy zealots. The net result of this, or so we were told by our by now heavily-perspiring, but still messianic leader, was that we would be Happy and Enthusiastic and Energetic and Fun-filled and Productive and, ergo, much more Useful Members of Society – in other words, WORTHY!

I don’t want to go out there and proselytise about my struggle and my life and how, since shaking off negativity and pessimism and attacking the world with joy and hallelujahs has turned me into a happily grinning maniac. I don’t want to work all the hours God gives, I don’t want to shake my fist at Fate and defy all the odds, I don’t want to attack everything that comes my way with vim, vigour and unstoppable exuberance. I’m about sick of hearing that I can go as far as my imagination allows; that if I can dream it I can BE it, that I need to aim higher and dream bigger and that the only limits are those I myself impose. I want limits, I want circumscription and boundaries. I just want to put in an honest day’s work, go home to my little house, enjoy my music and my telly and my soup and do some sewing when the mood strikes and visit friends and go to bed early and be happy in my own company.

Stop with making me feel guilty because I’m not out there making a difference, changing the world and generally being an all-round, high-achieving, wickedy wicked worthy person. Contentment may not have the same eclat or resounding ring of approval, but it is as worthy of pursuit and as necessary to cling to – if not more so – as the clamour and chase and the forever elusive goal of bigger, better, more and more.

I have been rambling around the blogosphere reading up about the idea of fixed and growth mindsets: I need to find out about these because they are important for foreign language learners apparently. If you have fixed mindset and believe that you don’t have a “gift” for languages, your approach to learning languages will be coloured by that belief. If you have a growth mindset, you will believe that with conscientious application and training, you will be able to acquire and control a foreign language.

But what about the person who totally believes in their ability to learn and control a foreign language, but they’re wrong? I have student this week who is convinced that he is a terrific student and that he has mastered the language. He isn’t and hasn’t. And no amount of telling him makes the blindest bit of difference. He double-checks everything he is told; he continues to make fundamental errors like saying “big-small” as one word; his stock phrase is “no problem” when there clearly is a big problem and he still thinks that “2 o’clock” means “two hours”. No amount of correction, subtle, direct or otherwise has occasioned any change or even any attempt at changing, fixing or even acknowledging the error.

How does one go about dealing with a fixed mindset that says, “I’m a terrific language learner and a very competent English speaker”? Is it maybe me that’s the problem?

Here’s the thing. I have to do two talks in short succession next week – one is at a huge convention of business-y type people in Germany and the other is to a smaller group of teacher-y trainer-y type people in London. The talks couldn’t be more different – they have to be. One addresses the business of business – competitive edge, globalised, increasingly connected, highly demanding international business arena; the urgent need to present a confident, accomplished, sophisticated image to the world by having your English under control otherwise those big competitive bogey men, China and India, will be ahead of the game, English-wise. The other is far less aggressive. It deals with the person at the heart of all this: the complex, pressured, tired, anxious and possibly fearful Business English learner, whose most urgent need is to be accepted, encouraged, praised and guided towards a place where s/he feels comfortable speaking in English.

I know which talk I’m looking forward to more…….

So long Candy’Stripe. It’s been good.

Why am I talking about this?…..Oh yes, I taught this morning for the first time in what seems like decades. Sometime back I lost my mojo somewhere: I avoid the classroom, any kind of activity where people look at me, or expect anything from me and all and everything to do with pursuing an identified and required “outcome” or “goal”.

But today I had to take the bit between my teeth and get back on the horse – so to speak. I enjoyed it. Nay, I thoroughly enjoyed it. My blood ran warm in my veins, my brain sprang into life, my words flowed with precision and ease. I knew where I was going, what to do next, which things to deal with and how to approach them. The group was enthusiastic, focussed, vocal, jolly and appreciative.

Why then don’t I do it more often? Is it fear? Stage-fright, if you will? Does that make me a failed actress who took up teaching because of the captive audience? I cannot rightly say, but mojo or no, I’m going to get into the classroom more. For the moment it will be for my sake, but as the nerves unwind, I trust one day it’ll be for the students’ sake again.

I know that in this day and age it is almost impossible to remain incognito, but I personally feel that as a teacher, it behoves me to exercise some sort of discretion and maintain a professional distance from students. Handing out phone numbers and email addresses, airily “friending” all and everyone on Facebook and inviting them to share in every aspect of one’s online life is a very slippery slope. I have tried in vain to impress this upon the teachers who work at the centre, but they hear me not. I don’t swop private phone numbers with my doctor, or my dentist, or my lawyer. I wouldn’t dream of asking them to “friend” me on Facebook and following them on Twitter would be the mark of a very sad person.

I have just convinced myself – old-fashioned it may be, but I’m standing my ground: keep your relationship with your students professional – do not allow them into your personal life and don’t expect to be asked into theirs; if you are, politely decline.

Chagas, the scourge of Bolivia’s indigenous population has no cure. There is treatment available, but it is financially out of the reach of most of the people who suffer from it, generation after generation. Not one to be defeated, Pilar Mateo took it upon herself to tackle this seemingly insurmountable problem. She went to Bolivia in 1998 to live with the people, study the Chagas beetle and start a grassroots project to try and eradicate this blight. As head of a company called Inesfly, she developed a house paint that contains microcapsules of insecticide which, once mixed with the paint and applied to the exterior and interior walls of a house, can keep the house insect-free for up to four years.

The importance of this is incalculable. For countries benighted by the spectre of unrelenting poverty, particularly among the indigenous people, capital investment in research to combat disease is notoriously underfunded. For Pilar’s company to have developed and produced such a relatively cheap and simple way of effectively controlling the insects that carry the Chagas parasite is nothing short of miraculous. The hope it has inspired and the generations of suffering it will alleviate cannot be over-estimated.

There is now wide-spread, international interest in Pilar’s work and her revolutionary product. The BBC are busy making a documentary on Pilar’s years in Bolivia and it will also include her next challenge, which is to set up a centre in Ghana to try and combat malaria using this revolutionary product. She has been invited to speak at the Vatican City in 2013 as part of an independently organised TED event. She will be speaking about her work and her vision of eradicating malaria in the southern hemisphere during the 21st century.

Pilar is also a very dedicated ambassador for women’s rights. She is a member of Momim – Indigenous Women of the World Movement -which seeks to give indigenous women back their dignity and promote awareness of the cultures of and the problems faced by indigenous women across cultures and continents. She has very strong feelings about the role of indigenous women in Third World countries – not only as stable and nurturing influences in society, but also as playing a critical role in helping to look after and maintain the good health of the people of these societies. She sees herself as their ally in the fight against the debilitating and endemic parasitic diseases that ravage the poorer Third World countries.

Women like Pilar make me proud to be a woman and students like her make my job one of the most gratifying in the world. It has been a privilege and a pleasure having her at Sherbourne Priors.

I have someone who appears to be a terminal TOEFL examinee who is desperate to “get the TOEFL” or at least “100 on the TOEFL” – whatever that means, and he is paying me. (We all sell ourselves at some point). Today he handed me a vocabulary list of “typical TOEFL words”. I have no idea what to say.

agrarian absenteeism
Apolloian
antebellum
to baffle pursuit
beam splitter
brace box
to brisk about
buttress up the facts
cavity magnetron
cicerone
dip net – WHAT?
elasticity of compression
famine fever
fatigue party
hasty pudding
helical gear
languid attempt (poetic, though it be)
lax vowel (could be tricky on the pron front)
the Massacre of St Bartholomew
minute anatomy
Olympian calm
resurrection man
rural dean
spell down
spot broadcasting
supple Tam
tease number
ternary time
thorough bass
tilt hammer
trying plane
utter barrister
vacant possession
visceral divination
ward heeler

Oh woe……

His latest contribution is about the art/practice of meditation Zen style.

(http://giaklamata.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/monkey-mind.html Here it is – copy and paste, I can’t make hot text.)

“Stilling the mind”. Uh-huh. I think, for what it’s worth, only we can do that. No amount of “coaching” or “training” or “instruction” will make it “go right”, or help you to “do” it. Excuse the overuse of inverted commas: they enclose words that we of a western mindset understand, but with which meditation has no truck. This makes me sound like “an authority”. Pfffft! Far from it. Because, you see, I’m a cheat.

Some 20 odd years ago, I was in – as they say – a fairly Bad Place: Things falling apart and the centre not holding sort of thing. I caught the Prozac wave and became mentally and emotionally anaesthetised. The only thing my “monkey mind” said was, “I don’t care; no really, I do not care. I couldn’t care less and I can’t be bothered to make myself care and go away and leave me alone so I can not care in peace.” Some dim, dark fragment of my brain fought valiantly and told me to “do something”. Randomly, I gave up smoking (extreme form of ‘doing something’, I admit), explored “alternative medicine”, spent huge amounts of money and trundled off to meditation. Except the giving up smoking bit, it was all vaguely entertaining. But being in the mood I was in, I decided that I was going to be The Only Person In The World who couldn’t be taught to meditate. “I CAN’T”, “How do I ‘Let the thoughts go as easily and they come?’”, ” I don’t WANT a mantra, I thought we stared at lotus flowers.” You get the idea…..

Then, because I THOUGHT I was being very biddable and “in need of help”, I made an appointment with a so-called guru, who was recommended for particularly “stubborn” cases. I had two appointments with him which have to rank as two of the most bizarre experiences of my life. He lived in fairly opulent comfort – probably off donations from hapless, pre-menopausal women. I was ushered with due reverence into a dark room which seemed to be holding a chain smokers’ convention. There the guru sat puffing away, which he had clearly been doing for some hours. The smoke was acrid and dense, there were cigarette butts everywhere, the ashtrays were jammed to overflowing, he had two fags on the go and was randomly flicking ash everywhere. This was not good for a recent quitter. As I sat down, he barked, “I didn’t tell you to sit.” Cowed and ashamed, I bowed and fumbled and muttered my apologies. He called in a youth of indeterminate age and sent him off to buy more cigarettes. He looked at me crossly, and gave me a 2 litre bottle of water and a collection of what looked like homeopathic pills. “Dissolve these in the water, take two tablespoonsful twice a day, sprinkle the water to East and West and come back in two weeks.This stuff is so powerful it will change your life.”

I stumbled out of the room, coughing and spluttering, eyes streaming, reeking of cigarette smoke but with my water bottle under my arm. I got home and proceeded to follow the guru’s instructions. After maybe half an hour, the monkey in my head laughed and laughed and said, “You really can’t be doing this. It’s too ridiculous for words.” I watched impassively as the powerful stuff gurgled away down the plughole.

Two weeks later I returned to guru man, pretending I had followed his instructions to the letter. He had quit smoking apparently as the room was cool and fresh and dark. There were quite a few other people in the room all kneeling in humble adoration. He immediately pointed me out. “YOU!” he shrieked, “you have not done what I told you.(How did he know?) You think I am a joke.(HOW DID HE KNOW?) You will get fat. Go.”

I left, shaking with fear, rage, embarrassment, I don’t know. And guess what? I started to put on weight. I had always been a 48 kilo wraith. I’m now what my grandson calls, a “comfy gran.”

ho hum……

But what about meditation? I read a book about it once that said, “Just DO it.” And that is probably the only “instruction” one needs.