Good Will to All...Including Yourself

Many artists become educators. Including me. I think the danger of being an educator is all the time you can stall from developing your own potential by focusing on "the community and the kids". It's like a reversed narcissist. Your needs come last. I'm sure it's a synonymous symptom to the role of parent. You build your identity as the giver, unconscious of how conveniently this role evades you from the responsibility of nurturing yourself. You somehow reason that if you take care of everyone else in your life, surely someone in your life will take care of you. Hmmm. Does that work for anyone out there? In my experience, as time goes by, part of you feels great about what you are sharing with others, while another part finds itself secretly frustrated and depleted of all that good energy that was never reserved for you to spread your own wings. Your fear is clever at disguising itself as responsibility, discipline and doing for others. And while those are undoubtedly good qualities, everything in moderation...even good will to others at the expense of one's own ability to regenerate and expand.