Concentration is a timid creature

Today is a normal working day for me... supposedly.

However, my husband is in hospital, having had surgery on his eye yesterday. After the coffee klatsch in the morning, I went to the office and was so useless to man or beast that my colleagues ordered me home.

This morning, I was due to fetch my husband from the hospital at 11am, but they had advised me to phone ahead at 10am to check. This I did, only to be told that the doctor wanted to re-evaluate him at noon. Of course, no-one saw fit to tell me why. They might have told my husband, but he is very squeamish, and is likely to have stuck his fingers in his ears and "lala-ed" loudly, so I'm none the wiser.

How much work do you think I'm doing as I wait for noon to roll around? You guessed it! Not a stitch. My attention is elsewhere, and I can't muster together enough brain cells to focus on anything much.

Having grown up in Africa, I'm familiar with the rules when gamespotting: if you go out there making a racket, you'll see nothing. Some of the bolder creatures might be spotted if the circumstances are less than ideal, but if you want to see the timid ones, you have to have the right set of circumstances. Preferably in the dry season, at sunrise or sunset, if you take your place in a hide at a water hole and keep dead quiet, you will see the timid creatures of the wild come down to drink.

Right now, inside my head, it's the wet season and there's a heck of a racket going on. The timid creatures of my mind are nowhere to be seen. The waterhole is deserted!

There are those who would call me lacking in self discipline. They might be right. But my husband is more important to me than my job, and so the motivation isn't there to override my jumbled emotions. I am very much a heart-led person.

How about your learners? How many of them are heart-led? How many of them are struggling to marshall their thoughts in the face of something that matters much more to them right now than the stuff they're supposed to be learning?

Picture: JW Blonk