on knowing and learning again the same old lessons

In her essay "Mirrorings," Lucy Grealy, author of Autobiography of a Face, writes

I once thought that truth was eternal, that when you understood something it was with you forever. I know now that this isn't so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things.

I thought about this passage a few times this week as I slowly disintegrated from not teaching. S. worries about what I'll be like in the summer. Somehow I get by, probably because there are trips and deadlines and such that move the time along faster. Why don't I teach in the summer, he wants to know. Because if I did, I'd be completely burnt out and miserable. I need the time to reenergize, to focus on writing, to sleep as late as I want. Yet when I sleep as late as I want, I get depressed. In other words, damned if I do, damned if I don't.

None of this is news. I have to relearn it each time I take any kind of break from teaching. My students keep my energy up. The scientists have yet to find a way to bottle such energy.