Ideas…

Ideas. We have all these ideas flying around our heads; colliding into each other, multiplying. They’re damn near out of control; those ideas.

I became obtrusively aware of mine at a young age. Inventions would barge into my mind and I had to jot them down. They were often accompanied by a very fanciful illustration. Sometimes I took my ideas and brought them to life.

Many a creation was made from dampened down toilet paper molded into brilliant sculptures. My bedroom windows displayed wet computer paper, stuck to the window for drying purposes, obviously. The paper was dripping with watercolor wonders.

In college I tried to build my ideas. I declared my major – engineering! – and was going to build things, but got tossed mercilessly into a black hole of numbers and computer programming; void of creative toilet paper sculptures. It took me almost failing out of school to reconsider my career path.

I decided to switch majors  to advertising where I could sell my ideas. I completed my coursework and found interest in my studies, but I wasn’t crazy about it. 

Now I am in Spain and I am teaching my ideas. Well, I teach English.  Now I’ll be honest, I can’t take credit for the English language, but I definitely support communication as a whole. It’s the techniques behind the performance of teaching a class – those ideas are mine.

Something magical happened in the classroom today. 

Somewhere in between grammar lessons and speaking exercises, the students started thinking. Suddenly, this wasn’t English class anymore. It was a raw debate about our subject matter: martial arts. Nostrils were flaring and their passionately conflicting ideas were being catapulted across the classroom in beautiful English!

Teachers can be facilitators in that way, sent to trick you into thinking. You don’t have to agree with teachers. You don’t have to like them. You have to be ruffled by the words; intrigued and triggered by them. And then off you go on your very own. The fuse has been lit and you are brazenly braving the world, taking the tools you’ve been given and getting involved. If we are lucky, our eyes have been opened to the most wonderous of things. We get heated and we get excited and we get filled with passionate ideas like mint tea filling a Moroccan cup.