How beautiful it is to be alive? How to heal? To actually breathe fresh air left over from exploding stars and grandiose trees like Lolloby pines. While many chase titles and positions of power. Some are here getting the art of breathing, eating, walking and loving down. In the Way of the Peaceful Warrior, there is a part where Dan is eating so fast that he doesn’t realize it himself. Socrates points it out and, to Dan’s dismay and rhetoric, “What? I have a good diet and I exercise.” But, the real question is, “How are you eating? Slow down.”
This book is such a beautiful jolt in the face, heart, brain and body by life to slow down. Everything in nature grows and changes by taking its very own time. Nature does not rush or hurry things along. Yet, everything in time, is completed along the way. Endings are beginnings and beginnings are endings.
By the way, I learned about the Peaceful Warrior through the book titled by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, “Nobody’s Girl”. I have not read it yet and in some sort of way, I’m not ready to.
Often, I think of who, what, when, where, why and how questions while reading and while experiencing life. One that often pops up for me is: How does full healing happen? I’m on the journey to realize and experience the power of healing it seems.
Sometimes, like a supernova, we too, explode into bits of stardust-expanding never to be whole again but in some sort of light on the verge of healing, changing and radiantly glowing. Real life and beyond it. It’s a kind of healing that human hearts hum, humming along like a humming bird.
At some point in time, we were all children. Having and or teaching children reminds you of that fact. Sark wrote and tapped into how to really love a child and in turn teaches us how to love ourselves. All of us are miracles. Keeping the gleam and joy and most of all: LOVE.
How to really love anyone including the self comes down to being present not only the presents. One of my favorite books entitled: The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman delves into how to love someone as it is so aptly titled the languages of love.
How do you show someone you love them? Find out their love language(s). Is it acts of service, quality time, physical touch, verbal affirmation and/or gift giving?
And, speak their love language with action and speak your own through action. Celebrate them. Celebrate you. Celebrate Earth. Walt Whitman: I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version
Have you ever noticed how a child’s face will come alive when they are doing something they love and enjoy? Even grown ups will light up when they are doing something they love.
People who love what they do and love who they are don’t take vacations from it or from themselves. It lights a fire within sparking up a joy that cannot ever be contained. In life, humans light each other up along the way like lining up dominoes and with one gentle nudge, each domino knocks into the other crashing and cascading down. Or like Pringos, “Once you pop, you can’t stop!” LOL
No one can ever take that purpose away once ignited. It cannot be faked, copied, or even categoried <– made up word. Be you and pass on your light of being. The greatest gift is the gift of oneself. One’s own transformation and change.
Who are you? Who are you becoming?
What are you?
When were you? When are you?
Where were you and where are you?
Why are you?
How are you?
Be and become. The light. The love. The joy. The hiccups. haha
Children should at least get 3 hours a day outside to play not in front of screens or constantly listening to lectures. (Yes screens when used appropriately and lectures each have their own respective places). However, I (we) am/are calling for some tune ups in our public school schedules as well as curriculums. The amount of children in our society who lose focus, have increased behavioral problems, diagnoses for all of these “labels” is truly astronomical. Our school is a microcosm of what is happening nationally. Every year should not get more challenging for a school and its teachers / administrators / leadership. We need to rise to this challenge and return to basics. Do you remember playing as a child? At home and at the schoolyard? How much time did you have? How about the games you played in your childhood? Tag, freeze tag, races, hide and seek, Mr. wolf/fox, climbing trees, rolling all around, creative and sustained imaginative play … so much happens for children during this process of play. And, truthfully speaking, grown ups need a little folly in their lives, too as Erasmus well put it. Without it we are walking shells of a human. Children are showing us what they need. Some are loud about it and some are quiet about it. No one wants to sound, be or be remembered like the teacher (or parent) in Charlie Brown.
We are society and can change it. We know and are aware as educators about true and real life child development. The stages we all learned about and went through ourselves as children: Sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete and formal. We need more playtime not more screen time / not more memorization/rote learning not curriculum that is abstract and out of touch with real children and how they learn. When it comes to testing and what a child “knows” we need both objective and subjective. We are all human. We need brain breaks. “Coffee breaks” for grown ups and “Energy” breaks for children.
We do not need more regulations or checklists…teachers, families and our schools are communities of “life-long”-curious-engaged learning. Should feel joy and fun coupled with respect, responsibility and a life-long readiness to learn and have curiosity. We all want what is best for our children / our future. Three hours of focusing on “school work” without a brain break knowing humans tend to lose focus most easily (in five minutes) especially when they are tired, stressed, experiencing distractions in their environment, performing repetitive tasks, or when dealing with complex information for extended periods of time. It is a lot we are requiring of our children. We have to be the change we wish to see in this world as Gandhi put it.
There truly needs to be a tune up. As a community school we can be a model for what real life / engaged learning embodies, looks and feels like. Children (truly, all of us) learn by doing and being active, engaged participants not passive observers. Using what they learn to apply it in real life / challenges is the best gift that we can give and bestow upon our children/our future who we pass the mic too. Here are several articles that I hope inspire you.
Let’s talk. Wealth. Rich and Poor. While we teach our children to value what is inside of themselves: the who of what they are. Their being. Their essence. Others from outside will influence them or try to belittle them or what they care about at times, without even knowing it themselves. It tugs at their heart and their soul. Ours, too, just a little bit until we get the jolt back into what matters most. People. Relationships. Experiences. Memories. Time. Talent. Treasure.
Our son asked, “Hey mom, is my jacket expensive?” Quite frankly, it doesn’t even matter. These things, no matter the cost won’t matter in the next five minutes or even in the next five years. If it won’t matter in the next minutes, months or even years: who cares. It’s not the jacket but the memories we make in it that truly matter. While most of society will try to convince you that your worth is determined by what you have on, in real real reality, it doesn’t. What your life depends on is who you are, who you surround yourself with and what you care about. So, take care of yourself, others and your surroundings/your space then it ripples outward and onward changing lives for the better.
So, how much does your life cost? How much value and worth? Are you living poor in mindset? Have the courage to change it before it’s far too late. Don’t live for a too die for house. Don’t live for a too die for car.
Live for a too die for life.
Collect memories. Not things. Collect the times. Spend time well. Treasure it. We all have time, talent and treasure. It is how you define it. No one else. Love life. Live it well. Make it a life well spent. Spend life well. The currency is always strong when passionately and poetically lived.
I was feeling grateful while reading an article that reflected on whether teaching was stunting other passions by Patrick Harris. Throughout it, I felt affirmed and validated in my own decade and a half experience from being busy all of the time to finding the time for the other things I care deeply about such as writing and creating. Read more from the article that inspired this one below:
Teaching just like receiving an “F” or a zero on a paper can literally “suck the life out of you” in the words of Rita Pierson but a “plus two” or being in pursuit of your passions / what you care about can fill you back up a bit.
The dilemma all comes down to having no time to pursue the other things that you love.
The top three for me are: reading, creating and travel.
It all starts at the foundation. What I like to call The Floor.
Has anyone ever experienced McDonald’s floors? You need slip resistant shoes for them. But there is always the possibility to still slip and fall. Like life. Then, you get back up. Learn the lessons. Notice the patterns. Keep moving, ebbing and flowing like the ocean. Always in a process of becoming.
Those that lie with dogs rise with fleas. Yes and no.
You do become like the people you surround yourself with.
I have been fortunate enough to be surrounded by the go getters, the people who get stuff done for their business, families, friends and for their soul.
They inspire me each and every day. I am humbled by the magnitude of their strength and their soul. We are a soul family. For real.
They didn’t choose to listen to dogma, complain or even echo the cliche: “whoa is me“, or even list their sacrifices and grievances, instead they did something about it. The trials and tribulations they took as learning lessons and stepping stones leading up to their greatness way of a whole being. in the making.
I bear witness. A dear friend turns and flips homes into Schools of Love helping to put the generational fire of addiction to ash for good. It starts with our youth. It starts with love.
Or another dear friend and soul sister who dared to open up her own school and name it after her grandmother, someone who had impacted and imprinted her childhood in a profound and endearing way. Legacy living on and on.
Another one, who from the moment I stepped foot into a classroom made me fall in love with Early Childhood Education. She had me notice the little things. It all started at a hug. A hug and a hello. She sees the humanity and the importance of relationships. That’s what it all comes down to. Love. Love. Love. Light, coupled by care and then, like alchemic magic, the rest handles itself.
Sometimes people don’t see their own value and their own worth. Another dear one, made me see my worth and negotiate to get what I deserve and continues to negotiate on the behalf of others.
Our students and children also have dreams and struggle with worth, self-efficacy and self-fulfilling prophecies. Sometimes they need a gentle or even loud reminder. A soft push to see the power in themselves. We are always in a process of becoming. Our process never ever ends even in the so-called death and dying part of it.
Another dear human who founded and runs an organization chose to empower her community and generations to follow. Breaking and dismantling poverty during and after war.
Then I met another remarkable person who on a soul level I knew she was changing lives. Discovery Center. Check it out.
I have bore witness to great ones who don’t step on the giants or on the shoes of others but walks like one in their own soles for their soul. No one likes to be stepped on. Ask ants. It messes up their whole flow.
They walk like giants.
They deeply inspired me to dig a little deeper and dance my own dance.
For real life, we’re all here walking and dancing each other home. Thank you for taking my hand everyone and dancing, singing, our ways home all while screaming love.
That’s the thing we have to keep shouting. Love. In the words of a dear one: L O V E. Wins. Every. Single. Time.
“If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl.” — MLK
If you can’t crawl, roll. If you can’t roll then get that tummy time in. This is the story of the stages of development and how children need caring grown ups to nurture our babies so they grow into their fullest potential. This is what to expect when you’re expecting. This is how we care for and nurture children after their basic needs of nutrition, toileting and shelter have been met. Early childhood development is impacted heavily by the mental health of the people who care for them even while they are in the womb. Care is solely based on three actions caring grown ups give: love, safety and consistency. During the early years of life, the brain is constantly and consistently growing and care should coincide with that growth. Grown ups have a mission to foster security, love and safety starting at birth which leads to toddlers establishing a strong sense of self and self-worth. Children not only want safety, love and consistency but they also need it.
Being able to build and sustain healthy relationships to consistently meet children where they are in order to secure a healthy attachment depends on the wholeness of the grown up who is caring for children. Are those who are caring for children well and healthy? A great question for grown ups to ask themselves is: “How am I feeling?” “What can I do about?”
In reality, a “healthy head start” is not always an option for babies. This is where early intervention comes in as a plan b if the family unit is broken. Early intervention such as head start, home cares and preschool improves the outlook and success of children growing into healthy and thriving adults. Caring grown ups help build a strong foundation also known as the brain. It also aids in breaking a family generational cycle of poverty. Need support?
Here are some resources and ways to support infants and toddlers in the first three years of life:
“I know what I want to do, and it makes sense to get going”. — Warren Buffet
Children know who they are and what they love to do from an early age. Families, educators and the community also discover what children are passionate about especially by paying close attention while being astute observers. When children arrive at school they get going in on the things they care about all while living out the mantra: being in the present moment. Something most of us could learn a lot from. While being in the present an idea enters the brain also know as a spark of joy that sends signals as what we’re supposed to be doing. An idea.
I had a student who had an idea. He started building a truck. More specifically, a cement mixer. In fact, he loved trucks. All kinds of trucks. His family was worried as he seemed obsessed with trucks and he didn’t like books so much. I mentioned that they just may have a builder on their hands. He gets distracted by what he cares about most because when there was a book about trucks he would study it research like and consumed by it ranging from non-fiction to Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said a garbage truck so he could keep Earth clean. When we went to the library on Wednesdays for story time, instead of listening to the story he would instead gravitate towards the window to watch the construction workers work. He would be engrossed by the construction site across the street and name every single truck as well as what they were doing. I mentioned it to the storyteller and she prepared stories the following week in honor of my student and the site across the street. We also met the team who were building. My student’s eyes lit up and stood in awe as the team described what they were working on. He asked the most questions and even got to sit in the cement mixer he saw each Wednesday, the exact truck he was building. This came full circle and his family beams with pride as their son is an expert in building and mechanics. He drew and from what I see online still draws blueprints, creates and builds.
Our ideas are unique to only us. No one else dreams the dreams we dream. It is vital to fulfill our mission. When a child is doing something they love they don’t have to be told or rewarded to do it. Even when they grow up it is the same as they do something they love. They do it because they want to be there. They do what they love and care about. That is the greatest gift. Are you honoring your child and your own inner child?
This is where intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation comes in.
Children are intrinsically motivated to do the things they love to do. They don’t need awards or even praise. They just do. They get going.
So what is it that your child wants to get going on? How about you? Just do it.
From the Playground 