Speaking No Evil (Part 2)

"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory."
                                                                                                   -Mahatma Gandhi


      After a week of non-violent speaking, overall, I am satisfied with my efforts.  And while I still have a tendency to sprinkle expletives throughout my private conversations (sorry Mom), I know that I gave my full effort to speaking non-violently.

    
     The aspect of this experiment that I am most proud of is going the entire week without raising my voice in class. On this front, I claim full effort, and full victory. Now, I have always been blessed with a deep bass voice, and this has always seemed like a natural way to make sure my classes got the information I wanted to share. However, the act of not raising my voice whenever the class got loud, or I wanted to be heard, made me aware of just how much of a crutch "yelling" had become in maintaining control in my classroom. I had never stopped to consider that speaking loudly could be construed as a form of violence. Perhaps the greatest revelation that I learned from this experiment is that I didn't need to raise my voice to be heard. Students adapted to the change, and knowing that I wasn't going to raise my voice, they quieted down. For me, this change brought the added dividend of an internal calming. I have felt less agitated and irritable since I started this experiment. I feel more in control of my emotions. Non-violent communication seems to agree with my disposition. My wife, Hope, confirmed this Friday afternoon. Picking me up from work, she commented that I seemed much happier, that I didn't seem so tired or upset at the end of the school day.
      The area of non-violent speaking that I still want to work on is cursing. While I started out strong, I noticed that by the end of the week these violent words were becoming more frequent, although less than at my normal rate of frequency.  A positive note is that I did recognize when I slipped, and the fact that I am being more conscious of my words is a promising trend.
I believe that Gandhi is right, "satisfaction is in the effort" and I am committed to continuing to make non-violent speaking the norm in my life.