The Compass or the Guilt Trip
Your “why” isn’t supposed to stay the same.
“People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel
Someone’s going to tell you to “remember your why” soon. Poster in the staff lounge, maybe. Email from someone who hasn’t been in a classroom in fifteen years but has feelings about teacher resilience.
It means well. They always do.
The problem isn’t the sentiment. It’s the assumption underneath it — that the why that got you here is still the why you need. That purpose is a fixed thing. Something to remember instead of something to tend.
Ikigai — the actual philosophy, not the Instagram diagram — doesn’t tell you to remember anything. It asks you to look at four things *right now*: what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, what sustains you. And whether those four things are still pointing the same direction.
For most of us, in most seasons: mostly. With some drift.
That’s not a crisis. That’s time passing. You’re not the same person who made the decision that got you here. The job’s changed. Expecting your purpose to hold perfectly still through all of that is like expecting a compass to point north while you’re spinning it.
Compasses need recalibrating. That’s not a flaw. That’s the point.
Heschel wrote that people have lost the power of celebration — that instead of celebrating, we seek to be amused. Celebration, he said, is an active state. It’s chosen on purpose.
Midyear flattens everything into passive reception. Emails arrive, you respond. The week ends, you collapse. And if you’re waiting for something big enough to feel like proof — some moment that matches the version of purpose you started with — you’ll keep waiting.
Celebration isn’t a response to circumstances. It’s a practice you bring *to* them. Small. Specific. Chosen.
So instead of remembering your why — ask what still lights you up. Not what should. Not what used to. What actually does, this week, in this version of your teaching life.
It might be embarrassingly small. The fifteen minutes after the last bell when the room goes quiet. The kid who waves at you in the hallway. The fact that you still care enough to think about this at all — which, at this point in the year, is genuinely not nothing.
Write it down somewhere you’ll see it tomorrow morning. Not as motivation. Just as a record. *This still exists. I noticed it.*
And if part of your “why” doesn’t fit anymore — you’re allowed to update it. Purpose isn’t a fixed point. It’s a direction. You can shift the direction without losing the compass.
The version of your “why” that makes you feel bad for not living up to the ideal you had at twenty-two — that’s not a compass.
That’s a guilt trip.
You know the difference.
Stay STRONG.
— Jeremy
The STRONG Framework — Successes, Thoughts & Takeaways, Recovery & Renewal, Optimize, No to Perfectionism, Gratitude & Growth — was built in a classroom. But it was never really about teaching. It’s about being a human who does hard work without losing themselves in it. This newsletter is the wider lens on that idea. Educators, yes. But also everyone else who’s good at what they do and trying to stay good at being themselves.