Postcard #5

I just watched the movie "Inside Out" this past weekend and it was so connected to some thoughts about empowerment and balance that I've been thinking about recently. I just had my first placement and the only way I could really describe the couple hours that I spent there were something along the lines of "ordered chaos". The classroom really made me think about the readings by Pema Chodron, who really talked about working with chaos and allowing it into your life, and understanding it. I feel like this movie did a really great job of describing that chaos and also bringing into this idea of balance. In this movie, the audience learned that joy and sadness are emotions that can't really exist without each other, and that even the so called 'bad' emotions are important in an individual. Pema Chodron also writes about this chaos in one's self and encourages the use of three methods to try and overcome it, or work with it: "no more struggle", "using poison as medicine", and "seeing whatever arises as enlightened wisdom". The one that really spoke to me, and that I saw happen in the classroom during my placement, was "no more struggle". I saw that grudges aren't really something that exist in these preschoolers, and the teachers encouraged that. When a student got angry or upset, he calmed down after realizing that theres so much more around in the classroom to be paying attention to then just his anger, and that his anger is only temporary. I saw one child break down a block tower that another child had built, but after a little fussing, the child who had built the tower just went back to building. It seemed that he realized that his anger wouldn't get him anywhere and it was just better to go back to playing. I saw this idea a lot in the movie as well, where the little girl had to accept her sadness about moving away from her hometown to be able to move on and create a new and happy life for herself in the new town.