my other space

This is my 4th office.  This is where I work as a reseacher and writer.  Right outside are children talking about projects, girls whispering about the boys in their class and birds chirping the latest in air and landing spaces just further beyond the corridor.  I am surrounded with books and children making noise while their teacher tries to keep them on their task.

The best place for distraction and focus is within this four walls of the Discovery and Learning Resource Center where I hole up to concoct and write ideas. At the moment,  I have French Musique playing in the background and it can be very inspiring. 

I see a quaint cafe someday, serving iced coffee and chocolate, biscuits and scones just right outside where some girls are sitting on the floor.  That is a very yummy idea.

a very decent space in one corner of a very busy library

photo take by Brianna Abellera G3

a regular day inside the library

the grill work outside my window

On Honors and Awards

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Good Morning Parents, HEDCen students, teachers and friends of The Little Farm House!

Of course, this is the day you validate the effort that you have put in, day in and day out to get to this moment when you can say that you have succeeded.

Indeed you have! But do not forget this.  Einstein himself believes that Not Everything that can be counted Counts, and not everything that Counts can be Counted. 

Try to figure an remember what it means.

Are you as good only as the medals you have won or the honors and awards that you have received?

Yes we can count all these!  Others may even say that it is already a habit to come up here on the stage year after year and once the cycle is broken, everything is broken.  One forgets that a person is not made of certificates and awards.  God did not create a child out of these materials.  Look at yourself.  What are you made of?

You are made of your soul, your bones, muscles, tissues, organs.  Your medals do not hold you up and make you walk or think even.  When you are hungry, your medals cannot even be eaten.

So why will anyone cry a river of tears or put up a protesy just because he is not getting any award.

Can your certificates love you?  Cook for you? Bless you? Heal you? 

I just want to remind you that loving your family and friends and making them smile is another way of looking at awards or rewards.  And yes we do not count the good deeds that we have done. 

I am in awe and I have admired the children who put dedication to learning.  And there are different ways to do that. One is to study to learn.   Another is to make mistakes and learn.

I hope that you see and realize the merits of both.  I hope that you don’t hurt yourself and your souls  for a piece of metal or paper.  I hope that you see yourselves beyond these.  I hope that you appreciate yourselves because of the other beautiful and amazing things that  you are and can become.

 The Dalai Lama said that the planet has enough of successful people.  What our planet desperately needs are peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds. 

I hope that your success will lead you to desire to be what our world desperately needs.  

Congratulations students!  And to the parents, May I say that you are the wind beneath your children’s wings.  Congratulations to you too!

 Cheers!! 

 

I have been trying to tell you

There have been many instances when I would catch myself saying the same things over and over for the last 30 years or so.

That gives me the validation that I have firm resolve on principles or ideals that I have lived by in my life as a mother and a teacher.

It is good to know that I have allies and if no one will believe my words, here is Einstein:

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted" 

 "Learning something means coming into contact with a world of which you knew nothing.  In order to learn, you must be humble." -Paulo Coelho

"The planet does not need more successful people.  The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds." Dalai Lama

Our planet also needs not only social workers but soul workers.

"Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think."  Albert Einstein

It is learning from one's own experiences not only to benefit the self but to offer these lessons as guideposts to others.

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 Just a few thoughts I have come across that I find might be useful more than the perfunctory "Congratulations!" to the awarrdees in the Recognition Rites tomorrow at HEDCen.  

So many parents look for schools that will give their children awards at the end of the year regardless of the rules of the game.  I find students who have gotten the honors and awards every year and still are empty inside.  Worst is when they get used to it and cannot therefore humbly accept when they lose in the "race".

Life is never a 'race'.  It is the slow trickling of water in an almost dying river or the rush of colors in the sunset.  It is something that one must personally experience and authentically live.  It is setting one's own benchmark in the effort for self-improvement.  Life is breathing the way one breathes not to benefit someone else's lungs.  Life is also about extending one's arms and hands to make a contribution to others.  It is so much more about knowing one's soul, healing one's hurt, getting up to try again and applying the lessons learned from having a life and from making big and small mistakes.  

These awards that I will confer tomorrow do not define the person or the child.  It must not be coveted for the honor and award as the end in itself  but moreso for its significant contribution to learning some life skills.  

I salute the children who have tried in spite of limitations, who have learned to laugh at their silly selves, and who at the end of the day, have a firm grasp of who they are and who they are not, what they did, and what they want to do when the next morning comes.

I love the children who have cried in desperation and have openly grieved for a goal unattained, I love those who have other "important agenda" and are seeking their own venues,  I love those who make me laugh and those who are alive because they are free from the shackles of (wrong) expectations. 

In-between and Gabby's letter

Pre Retirement:
Goal - Pleasure with Business

Post Retirement:  Watching life
No goal

This formula can only happen when you panic less.  The more you try to breathe, the more you get suffocated!

Pre-retirement was business 12 hours a week, pleasure was 28 hrs a week.  When business tries to mix with pleasure during pleasure hours,  then I decide to transform business to pleasure.  It isn't always easy but it takes practice to master it.  You can ask me how but there is only one way:  decide not to sabotage your plan- no self-inflicted pain, no self-flagellation, nothing that will diminish my creativity to turn work to bliss. 

Post retirement is a conversion of hours of pleasure to hours of "work".  After mastering the art of pleasure with business, work becomes pure pleasure, and pleasure becomes more gratifying.

Presently, I am indulged in the pleasure  of observing, data gathering, assessing, reviewing some pertinent past, listening, laughing, getting annoyed, watering the pechay outside my kitchen, picking lime, guavas and macopas and discovering...

Discovering the freedom and boldness in using flat brushes in my watercolor paintings have brought me "kilig" moments.  "Kilig" moments for me is when something new titillates your senses- the way a baby would react to a new taste like the tartness of green mango or ripe tamarind.

I am also presently involved in making a survey on people's behavior and the patterns by which I may predict results.

Lately, I have also been experimenting on manifestations: what comes without even looking for it!!!!
One must know what one wants- and it has to be something you must have thought of or wished or prayed for... then forgot. 

So I work the long hours of the day till late at night sometimes.  I am an observer in activities involving teachers and young leaders, as of late.  I met my mentor a few days ago.  I am reviewing my notes which are mostly the basis and framework of my "project" and I read a student's letter of nostalgia and reminiscence of her vivid and innocent experiences of the past and the future.

With her permission, I am posting her letter on this blog.  One of the things I do now is enjoying some of the moments that bring fulfillment whether I looked for them or not.

Gabby Ballesteros and her beautiful letter on my page...

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If you're reading this, I guess you know me. Female, Filipino, USED to go to HEdCen.

'HEdCen?' you may be asking. Holistic Education Center, dearie, don't forget it. We're what you would call a 'private school', or a 'special school'. I mean, what other school lets five-year-olds touch a constrictor snake, and teaches Physics in Grade One?

Yeah, life was hard there, and my classmates were douch es sometimes, but loyal to the very end. This may seem melodramatic, but they were family. Juju, Raffy, Gail, Pat, Cheskie, Kylie, Theresa, Anakin, Aaron/ Sarah, and the others, though I still haven't forgotten you guys.

And then there were the teachers. All helpful, all kind, not always understanding, but that, my dear friend, is human nature. They preformed as best as they could, and though they got angry at us many times over the years, we knew that they cared.

But those times are past, and the gang is breaking up. We finished Grade One to Grade Six; that was the aim of many of my batchmates, myself included, before we were transferred to other schools.We'll meet new people, some are even going abroad!

Now, let's be a bit more grounded in reality. It's a truth that perhaps someday, I'll forget their names, their faces. Let's be realistic; we're only in Grade School, after all. Won't affect us much if we forget about each other. However, like a castle in which you are knighted, I'll at least try to remember the experiences.

Yes, THOSE experiences. Remember the invisible ink pen, the Sci Expos, the experiments, the field trips, the cleanups of the Tungtong River? The tears, the scoldings, the sadness, the sermons? But it will most of all make me think about the LAUGHTER. For we, as a batch, brought a little laughter into the world; engrained it in each of our hearts, minds, and memories. Perhaps even our teachers' hearts and minds, too.

I say the dreaded thing: We WILL drift apart, we WILL leave someday, and we WILL grow up. A transition from childhood to adolescence, a journey that we started to take the moment we said goodbye. Childhood is a dream; a dream that we must all wake up from it journey into another. However, though for now I am uncertain, I think we'll cross paths again very soon, for time is but a minute and but a eternity in a dream, is it not?

Now that you mention it, life there in HEdCen was a dream in itself; pure bliss, yet the time spent there went so fast. Honestly, I thought Grade Six, my time at HEdCen, would last forever and a day. Turns out, it went by faster than I thought. Now it's high summer, and more than a month since I left the grounds of HEdCen as a student for the very last time. I'm pretty sure the grass is withering from all this heat, though.

I used to cry when thinking about HEdCen and the fact I was leaving for good. Now, I think I have accepted it, no matter how sad that may be.

The mango tree right outside my window is what I'm looking at while I type; it is a veritable ecosystem in itself. The mangoes, though not yet ripe, are heavy and large, bending the tree over the roof. Meanwhile, a large vine curls around this tree's trunk, splitting into many tendrils at a point and covering the length of this tree, intersecting at various points all the way to the great blue sky. Perhaps we're like that, or perhaps I am merely feeling nostalgic for it already.

No matter. We go our separate ways, that's for sure. But maybe, just maybe, we're still growing together around the tree trunk of life, separate tendrils, yet crossing each others paths once in a while. Acknowledging each other but silent, all the way until we are together again at the very top, where the earth meets the cloudless blue sky.

Ta-ta! 

HEDCen: The Sacred in the Ordinary

It was another ordinary moment of celebrating the sacred in our ordinary HEdCen way of life.  One might ask, what is ordinary in our culture?

Here's my minute list:

punctuality - birds have to wake up early to be there where the food is, where life throbs, and where love is.  We come to our appointments on time.  We are in school ready for learning and we want to get the first slice of action by being punctual.  On the dot like ! ? .

honesty and truthfulness - nothing beats the lizards and related creatures when they bask in the sun.  Light exposes the beauty of nakedness.  We tell the truth.  It was a child who said that the "Emperor has no clothes on".  And even in a community gathering like the Monday assembly,  when asked if they have bullied someone, brave souls stood up to tell the truth!  I guess that one has to be brave to be  honest and true.

respect - we live in an organic environment where ants paint murals on the classroom walls.  I told the children not to kill ants for they too have a mission to accomplish.  We arm ourselves with repellant against the deadly, long-legged, blood-sucking muscas and we leave the ants alone together with all the other bugs.   

We work hard like the ants and carry loads that may even be bigger than us.  We work to full capacity or at least we try not to be fazed with what others perceive as "hard" or "heavy".

It is ordinary to play, sing or make beautiful creations with our hands.

It is ordinary to abstain from junk food and soft drink and to make a hard choice of eating corn on the cob, rice cakes cooked in coco milk or tamarind juice and tea extracted from camote leaves among other things when the lure of chips and soda can be irresistible.

While the world is under the spell and influence of Lady Gaga, Anime and the like - it is our way of life here in HEdCen, to wear "Ethnic" for special occassions or on ordinary school day.

These and a lot more are ordinary in our school.

 These ordinary things are what is SACRED here.  That's why, we don't take ordinary things for granted. 

So ordinary for our children's parents to look up to their children as their everyday heroes because there are times when their children parent their parents or in other words - when adults learn from their children.

It is with great resolve that we practice these ordinary things on ordinary days and even on special occasions and if we just won't give up, our success on moment to moment, is just a strife away.

It is my wish and prayer that heroism becomes ordinary, that true love becomes ordinary, that kindness and goodness are ordinary and that laughter becomes as ordinary as music.

Let's all grow several notches from where we are this moment.
  
                                 ...remembering the sacred in the ordinary...