Thomas Merton said what is below. It first appeared here in 2007. I think it’s a good time to republish it here in the light of some of us here having made the significant decision to this year work on our mental health in a conscious, specific way to our lessons and daily life in our schools and in particular in the moments, we spend teaching.
My own prayer for this year is to be conscious when working with my students of my own mental balance. I could not do that before I learned this way of teaching – it was all crazy and that’s all I can say about those lost years. But now I have a way that indeed does bring mental balance, and lots of it, as long as I enforce my rules at each turn, so that is my goal for this year.
Merton wasn’t directly talking to foreign language teachers trying to master CI. He is not just talking to teachers who are just trying to get through the year like some of us are, but he could have been. Each year these words become more clear to me. I think that by the time I am 280 years old or so (maybe 300), I may be getting them incorporated into my daily life:
“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone with everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”