Facebook Mysteries

Facebook!  “If you want to be a writer,” everybody says, “you have to have a Facebook page.”

Therefore…well tardy of the forward thinking online crowd…I am filling out my background information for a Facebook page.  It’s exhausting.  I’m supposed to have an opinion about everything apparently.  Sometimes I don’t have an opinion.  Should I make one up?

Sometimes I have an opinion, but it’s embarrassing and I don’t want the world to know about it.  Do I really want to admit to the universe that I love watching American Pickers on the history channel?  I love the enthusiasm of Mike and Frank picking through all that junk in those dilapidated barns.  They would make great history teachers. There, now I’ve admitted my deep dark secret to the world, or at least the friendly community of my bloggers.

Mike and Frank comb the backroads of America.

It feels more than a little awkward for a professional teacher to be posting information about her political and religious beliefs.  Most teachers go way out of their way not to share that information.  There is that separation of church and state principle on which our country was based.  I wouldn’t even tell my students who I was voting for in any election for fear of overstepping a boundary of influence while I was in front of the classroom.  But these days I supervise college seniors doing their student teaching.  I’m not trying to influence anyone from the front of a classroom.

Who Inspires Me?

But on one question I am certain.  Who inspires me?  I can’t download a celebrity’s face or even a famous person.  People who live in the real world inspire me.  While my daughter was battling cancer, I met a woman who had twin babies, one of whom had cancer.  Twin babies is challenging enough, without a pediatric cancer diagnosis.  That mother inspired me.

I had a daughter  who was born with cerebral palsy.  She did everything with one hand for her entire life.  She did it so well and effortlessly that hardly anyone ever noticed.  She tied her shoes, buttoned her clothes, carried her books and rode a horse using only one hand.   Try it. But then I worked in a school where a student had no arms at all and ate his meals and typed with his feet.  All of life’s challenges are a matter of perspective.

Does someone have to be disabled in order to be inspirational?  Of course not.

I know a lady who bakes birthday cakes for people who would not receive a cake otherwise.  She has baked hundreds of cakes for people she has never met.  She has other volunteers deliver them so that the attention remains on the person celebrating the birthday and not on the baker.

Other people I admire?

• Friends who encourage me and others… to be the best that we can be.
• People who discover a need and fill it, without wasting breath about what other people should be doing to fill that need.
• People who fail, but keep on trying, no matter what the odds.
• People who face challenges with a positive attitude.
• People who have fears (don’t we all?), but refuse to give in to those fears.  They just recognize the fear and move forward anyway.

These are the people who inspire me.  Usually these are people I know in all walks of life.  Sometimes they are a friend.  Sometimes they are a friend of a friend.  They aren’t famous or celebrities. They aren’t seeking out awards or even accolades.  They are walking, breathing superheros.  I’m proud to know them.  They inspire me everyday.  That was a facebook entry I found easy to answer.  But you won’t see famous photos there on my page.  No one knew Clark Kent was a hero either.