Seeing Things: Reality of My Own

This is my tenth year teaching undergraduate students in the department of English language. Majored in English literature, I spent the last decade of my life discussing and arguing about novels, poems, plays and literary theories written in English with students who barely know how to read this foreign language. Teachers of conversation, comprehension and grammar suffer with students who hardly manage to pass their classes; however, I get into their classes afterwards demanding from my students to read literature written with such figuratively sophisticated language that dazzle many professional critics.

When I think of my job, and contemplate what I actually do, I realize that I am either a dreamer, who has no grasp of the reality of things, or I have such perverse personality that finds happiness in the misery of others; for I am sure my lectures are pure torture for most of these poor learners!!

With the hope that I am not the second possibility, and that I still retain some symptoms of humanity in me, which I assume still exist regardless of what I have seen in my life, I can myself a dreamer, or an idealist who can't see reality as it is, rather as it should be. I live inside my brain, with my own inventions, expectations, and dreams rather with the actual events around me. I always tell my students that they have to do this, should be that…etc. I never actually accepted the reality of things, never accepted their low level of English, or the fact that not everyone is passionate about literature the way I am.

My escape from reality has been always a trait in me since childhood. I find this reality that surrounds me sterile, dry, and also suffocating; there is always something missing from this reality, and above all, it is something that I can't really control. Thus, whenever an opportunity for imagination, expectation, or invention of events, I go ahead, and grow attach to a reality that I have invented myself. Maybe this is why I am so passionate about literature, for the world created in those novels is a world I can see all its dimensions, nothing is mysterious to me, and if I don't like how things are going on, I can just close the book and move to another world, or another novel.

That wouldn't be a problem if I didn't have so many disappointments in life, but how can I avoid that since I create my own trap and fell into it?!!

My real problem is that I can't help it: I can't hold off my imagination from creating possibilities for tomorrow, I can't stop it from drawing my future with number of seniors, even if all the possibilities I put ahead are far-fetched! In simple words, I can't stop dreaming, nights and days, even most of my dreams will never come true, but still, my mind will continue creating new worlds for me, hoping that one day, maybe, one of them will hit reality at the end.

Nadia F. Mohammed