I’m going to
sing, play, and be happy to be alive, so my blog is going to take a vacation
for a week. I’ll be back with lots
of fantastic ideas you can use to start the New Year on December 26.
My daughter,
Holly, sent this email several weeks ago, and I thought it might be a
meaningful reminder to all of us this holiday season. My wish for each of you is that every day for a few moments
you can forget about the gifts, bills, cooking, and shopping and find time to
sing, play, and be happy to be alive!
Wishing love,
joy, peace, and hope to all of you!
Dr. Jean
Tonight KJ and I
did his last week's homework together. He had to read a story and answer some
questions about it, trying to get to the theme or main idea, which I'm
totally in favor of since my college students struggle with this skill.
However, the story was the old fable about the grasshopper and the ant, retold.
On the back, the worksheet tells parents that the theme of the story is
"Be sure to work hard and save up for bad times." Okay. No problem.
But in the story the ant works all summer: "She did not have time to sing
and play." And what about the grasshopper? "He was happy to be alive
and spent every day doing all of the things he wanted to do... He sang his
grasshopper songs and played in the summer rain..." What a beautiful
thing! Shouldn't we all try to be a bit happier to be alive? Shouldn't we sing
and play more often? We work way too hard in this country, mostly to buy more stuff that we
don't need anyway. As KJ and I were reading this story together, it
struck me that our country is way too much like the ant--the ant
on overdrive! We've worked and accumulated so much stuff that we
don't have any time to play. And the poor grasshopper--the ant doesn't even
share any of her food with him! How mean! Is that the kind of message I want to
give KJ, that he shouldn't bother to help people who need help? That it's
probably their fault anyway? So after he told me the "theme"--which
he could do without blinking--we talked about how sad the story made me because
I really like the grasshopper and I think we should all be happy to be alive,
and I think we should help people when they need it. He said,
"Yea--if the ant went to Disney World she probably wouldn't even go
on any rides. She'd just be running around trying to find seeds and
stuff and she'd get stepped on because there are way too many people at
Disney World." And I thought that was pretty funny! So here's to being
a little bit more like grasshoppers (especially in elementary
school)!
