Personal vs Professional

With Students 2014

“How do you balance your professional and personal life?” I’ve never really understood that question though I’ve heard it umpteen times, the latest being at a blog hop community. In fact, I’m writing this only because of that hop.

I worked as a teacher for all of 40 years and retired last year at the age of 65. In all those years I never experienced anything like a tightrope walk between my job and personal life. I was a bachelor for the initial ten years. So I had to cook my meals, wash my clothes, fetch water from far away in summer… And prepare classes for the next day, question papers for exams, check answer sheets when exams were over… All that happened like a smoothly flowing river on the mountainous terrain of Meghalaya where I worked.

Shillong remains at an elevation of 1496 metres from sea level and it has no streams, let alone rivers. The only river that flowed was my life itself. Until things went wrong and the river was riled totally. That’s the only time when I found my life a worse than a tightrope walk. And I quit the place eventually.

Then I ended up in Delhi doing the same job but in a residential school which gave me staff quarters and free food. The job became even more lovable and exciting. There is little distinction between personal life and professional life in a residential school. Mine was an exclusively residential school and it was like a huge joint family. Nothing was too professional. We were all involved with each other day and night, so to say.

We teachers were there with the students on the playground before sunrise for what was known as PT [Physical Training]. The classes began as early as 7.10 am. Two periods, then breakfast students and teachers together, morning assembly, classes, lunch, free time, games, supervised study-time, and dinner. We had duties after dinner too until students went to sleep.

Where could I draw the line between personal and professional life? All the practices for our extracurricular activities like Annual Day and interschool competitions took place after dinner. Most of my time was spent in school. And I enjoyed it. I loved the job.

I taught in a regular school in Kerala for the last ten years of my working life. My involvement with students became much less. Some kind of a line appeared between personal and professional life. But the truth is I cherish my Delhi days more where that line didn’t exist.

My only grief is that my former students of Delhi seem to view me as a traitor now because I question the menacing sectarian politics in the country and they all belong to that dominant sect. My classrooms in Kerala had both Hindus and Christians, with a few Muslims. Balancing my views on religion was tough, but not balancing personal and professional life.

Now, retirement has only changed the contents of my timetable. The alarm clock is less authoritarian. I spend more time in my personal library, reading or writing. In the last one year of retirement, I wrote a book on religion which is pretty well accepted by readers. I am gratified, though I wish more of my students took interest in this new book of mine especially since we all discussed religion pretty much in the classrooms.

Looking back, I think the expression ‘work-life balance’ assumes that work and life are two different things competing for our attention. Perhaps that is true for some professions and some people. But teaching never felt like that to me. Teaching wasn’t merely what I did for a salary. It shaped my relationships with people, my reading, my travels, my conversations, and even the books I now write. It became part of my life rather than its rival.

I’m not suggesting that life was stress-free. Far from that. There were exhausting days, impossible deadlines, difficult students, unreasonable parents, and administrators who seemed convinced that teachers didn’t need leisure. There were family emergencies and professional disappointments. Yet I seldom felt that I was carrying two separate loads on my shoulders. It was one life carrying many responsibilities.

Perhaps that’s why the question of “balancing” puzzles me. Nobody asks: “How do you balance breathing and walking?”

Perhaps the real balancing act wasn’t between profession and personal life at all. It was between expectations and contentment. Today, looking back at those 40 years, contentment wins.

With Students 2018

This post is a part of ‘Beyond the Desk Blog Hop’ hosted by Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed under Every Conversation Matters blog hop series

 PS. I'm eager and willing to walk into another classroom and teach - till my last breath.