I taught at Metta School once.

An enlightening conversation with kaiqin days before got me thinking about my kids back at Metta School. It was in the East and I had no business there and the pay was shit but I went anyway for the experience.

It broke my heart.

The teachers all seem very warm, with a tinge of impatience. The helpers are seem very caring, with a dash of resentment. When I see them, the only phrase that comes to mind is "you can only love someone so much."

And I know the icy way they treat specialized teachers who don't know better because they're only here for a day and don't know any better about surviving this day after day, so I didn't do anything.

I was teaching a child how to use glue, and he refused to talk to me entirely. All he did was touch my knee. And later I found out they express communication through touch, not speech.

Afterwards, I went to help out with a child. He needed to draw a montif for his "castle", a paper structure that me and the main specialist put together at the beginning.

I very kindly asked him,

"What do you want to draw?"

No response, so I patiently tried again.

"Just draw anything you think of!"

I said very cheerily.

The child looked at me.

A helper then came over and looked at me with the most patronizing smile ever and replied.

"Oh. Don't you know they can't think?"

And she gave me a dismissive glance then took the child's hand and scribbled a drawing from her own creation and I didn't know what to say, so I left the child and went to help the others.

I admit I am an outsider and I don't know shit. I admit that I am only here for a day and that's why my empathy stretches for miles whereas theirs have reached maximum elasticity.

I'm not angry in the least at her tone or her arrogance to me. But I am heavily offended at the way she said the child cannot think. How can you expect breakthroughs when you're fixated on what you think he cannot do?

But then again, I don't know his condition and I don't know what he's capable or incapable of, so I was no in place to say anything. All I could do was walk away and pray the child didn't hear that.

I left drained while the main specialist cheerily talked of her ex boyfriends and dates and lunch appointments and everything happy under the sun, and I realized that some people just can't connect with others on an empathetic level, only sympathetic, and that no convincing will ever change that.

The world is too big and I am so very small.

I can't help them all.