We have now finished "Wonder" so it is your turn to come up with a precept. It can be one that has been written by someone else that you particularly like, or you can make up your own. In the comments section you need to say what your precept is and then go a little deeper. Explain what you think it means and why you chose it.
"No man is an island entire of itself." - John Donne
This one is a bit tricky but see if you can write a paragraph explaining what you think this means and how you feel it might be pertinent to you. Remember, precepts are rules about really important things. They are a saying, or ground rule that can motivate you.
Mr Browne's first precept is "When given the choice between being right, or being kind, choose kind." - Dr. Wayne Dyer You need to write a paragraph explaining what this precept means to you. Good luck! This is the event which inspired the author to write this book. (You can find out more on her website) About five years ago I took my son's for ice cream, and while my older son went inside to buy us our milk shakes, my younger son and I waited on the bench outside. My younger son was only about 3 years old at the time, and he was in his stroller facing me while I sat on the bench. At a certain point I realized that sitting right next to me was a little girl with a severe craniofacial difference, her friend (or sister), and her mother. When my younger son looked up and saw her, he reacted exactly the way you might think a three-year old would react when seeing something that scared him: he started to cry—pretty loudly, too. I hurriedly tried to push him away in the stroller, not for his sake but to avoid hurting the girl's feelings, and in my haste I caused my older son to spill the shakes, and, well, it was quite a scene—the opposite of what I had hoped for. But as I pushed my younger son’s stroller away I heard the little girls’ mom say, in as sweet and calm a voice as you can imagine: “Okay, guys, I think it’s time to go.” And that just got to me. For the rest of the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about how that scene had played out. It occurred to me that they probably went through something like that dozens of times a day. Hundreds of times. What would that be like? What could I be teaching my children so they could understand how to respond better next time? Is “don’t stare” even the right thing to teach, or is there something deeper? All this stuff was flying through my head, and I realized that I was disappointed in myself because I had missed a good teaching moment for my kids. What I should have done, instead of trying to get my kids away and avoid the situation, was engage the girl and her mother in conversation. If my son cried, so be it: kids cry. But I should have set a better example for him, and shown him there was nothing to fear. Instead I panicked. I simply didn't have the wherewithall to know what to do in that situation. Coincidentally, the song Wonder by Natalie Merchant came on the radio that night, as I was thinking about the ice cream incident, and something about the words to the song just got to me. I started writing Wonder that very night. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
February 2014
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