My Boggled Mind

In a couple of hours the MacGillivray School Council AGM will be getting started and I wont be there for the first time. Ever.

I think this is how a person who has decided to voluntarily have their jaw wired shut with a goal to loose weight would feel in the waiting room.

I’ve had experiences with addiction.  Smoking and food have been my vices and I’ve both tried and succeeded and tried and failed to kick both of those habits more than once in my lifetime.   My father was an alcoholic and it killed him.

For me, MacGillivray School Council is as Toxic as alcohol was for my father.

Like any other ‘drug’ it starts off seeming harmless, if not even “good for you”.  You get ‘high’ on participating, helping, contributing.  As the council accomplishments grow, the feeling of being on a successful team grows and there’s just something that makes you stand a little taller.

Sounds great doesn’t it?  And, there are people who can and do and participate and contribute year after year with no ill side effects, and there are, I’m sure, school councils that are all of that and only that.

But with MacGillivray it’s like the Listeria in the hot dog; the nut in the nut free lunch, the alcohol in the punch…. its that one thing that turns something perfectly innocuous for most people into something absolutely toxic.

That ingredient, that extra something adds conflict, competition, drama, anger, frustration, tension, and malice to the mix. For some – it’s just too unpleasant and they easily and simply remove themselves from the situation.  For others, like me, it becomes challenging and interesting.  The drama gets my adrenaline pumping.

At first, the rock at the pit of your gut you feel as the time for the meeting gets nearer is uncomfortable.  But, if you’re like me, you try to work through it as an exercise in personal growth… you face it like a challenge that in overcoming, will make you stronger and add to your character.

Before long, that feeling is just a part of it and it’s ‘normal’ that every meeting is a debate, a battle of wits, an age old game of good vs. evil (my side of course being ‘good’).

You laugh.  I know it. But this isn’t all in my mind.  The entire council gets wrapped up in it and becomes divided into sides – us and them and then productivity gets stuck in the crossfire.

It’s easy in hindsight to say that stepping away would be better for everyone.  But, like 4 year old children, neither side is willing to let the other ‘win’.  Exploring the psychological reasons for that would take a couple more posts… or a couple more years.

Ha!  With all my free time not on the council – I should be able to figure that out in no time.

So here I sit – in about an hour people will be heading in to the Library.

I’m not going back because it’s not good for me.

I’m not going back because it’s not good for the council.

I’m not going back because I am unable to have a cigarette in my hand and not light it, pie in the kitchen and not eat it

Give me the strength to accept the things I can not change.  I can go back to the council at some point.   In the mean time, I’ll look at this as a character building excersise.  Another Road on my life journey.