THE RIPPLE EFFECT

You know, little things in this world matter a lot, even the bigger things we set our minds on, the greater things we build up on our minds are not even really important. Things like money, pleasure, luxury, just to name a few.
Bigger things are built on little things, that is, little things matter a lot. A small stone thrown in a pool of water causes a ripple effect which means no matter how little what we do it affects the people around us.
Most people find it easy to tell a lie, from an insignificant lie as to where you are to someone waiting for you, to lying to cover up a mistake.
One thing is when you lie you keep on doing it and the more lies you tell the easier it becomes for you to tell one until it  becomes difficult for you to tell the truth even  if you want to.
It is easy to point accusing fingers to our leaders, it is very easy for us to judge them the question is as a personal representation of yourself are you a person of integrity, well you might not be embezzling public funds yet or be lying to people for your personal gain, but those little things you think are insignificant build up to make you a person in which value can be placed on. Let your conscience be the judge.

There are these short stories I read from a devotional book, a true life story;

In a country church of a small town, an altar boy, serving the priest at Sunday mass, accidentally dropped the cruet of wine. The priest slapped the altar boy on the cheek, and in an angry voice, shouted ‘leave the altar and don’t ever come back!’  That boy later became Marshall Tito, the communist leader of Yugoslavia who massacred thousands of people.
In the cathedral of a large city, an altar boy, serving the bishop at Sunday mass, accidentally dropped the cruet of wine. With a warm, gentle look in his eyes, the bishop lovingly whispered, ‘someday you will become a priest’. That boy grew up to become Archbishop Fulton Sheen who touched the lives of millions worldwide with his warmth, wisdom and humor.
Reading these two stories there is one similar thing, WORD. Correction was made but there is only one difference , the manner of which they were uttered, the Bible makes us to understand  that the tongue being the smallest part of the body is very dangerous and if not tamed can cause great ruin.
In my generation, people have let loose of their tongue, they say anything they want to say as it comes to their head without even stopping to think for a few seconds the effect it might have on the person which it is spoken to.
I am not against correction, most parents think or believe that they have the right to say anything to their child(ren) no matter how grave it is to their detriment in a bid to correct them. When someone a child looks up to, loves and older constantly or even occasionally says hurtful words to the child, each word punctures the ego and confidence of the child. We all are different, we do not have the same level of resilience to wrong things that happen to us, but what about those who have low resilience to such things, most people grow up believing the worst about themselves, they end up believing they are so worthless, that is why someone will walk into a school, go on a killing spree then shoot himself. Why? Because they are angry at people and see them as worthless.
In short, little words of encouragement might change the life of a person; the depth at which it goes can never be fathomed. Half of who I am today is because of an encouragement I have received one way or the other.
Encourage someone today; remember someone might find hope in your words.   

Life Of Pi

There are two sides to life; the good side and the bad side, the one which we understand and the side we don’t. I think why some people don’t believe in God is that He is beyond human understanding, for you to understand God you have to be able to believe in mystery because that is his way (God works in mysterious ways).  In the movie Life Of Pi, I pondered on how that story can make anyone believe in God then I watched it again; there are two stories in the movie, the tiger story and the animal story, most people believed the animal story because it sounded real and simple, nothing complex just what the simple human mind could take in and process but the writer actually believes in the tiger story, so do I.

At some point Pi thought the God he believed in doesn’t really care about him, after he left the floating island he said ‘when God seemed to have abandoned me he was watching, even when he seemed indifferent to my suffering he was watching and when I was beyond all hope of saving he gave me the rest and gave me a sign to continue my journey'. Giving deep thoughts about it the Life Of Pi is applicable to everyone, we all have situations we pass through in life, our darkest moment when it seems everybody has forsaken us or no one can understand God is just like what Pi said He is always watching us and gives us rest and hope to pass through any situation.

*the beauty and the magnificent work of nature in which Pi met with made me remember what Albert Einstein said about God;

‘We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the language in which they were written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being towards God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws. Our limited mind cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellation’.*   

EDUCATION; a modern form of slavery

Let’s  go back in time; the early men didn’t learn anything in the four walls of a room, in fact what they learnt was through exploration and discovery, they roam around, experience and experiment things by themselves with no instruction whatsoever from anyone .           

In the course of history, gradually they were forced to settle down and farm due to the weather and agricultural conditions abandoning their nomadic lifestyle, then there came the need to increase and acquire properties, laborers were needed on the farm and the people who couldn’t afford or were too weak to acquire properties were forced to work for the rich ones. There the era of kings, lords, slaves, servants and serfs began. Children were also made to work on the farms in which working replaced the natural instinct of a child to run free and play exploring his environment. Series of punishments were meted down to children to suppress their will. Children as young as 7years of age were made to work on farms or mines, they were constantly bullied by  grave punishments if they ever act according to their own will. In some places many deaths were recorded due to starvation, disease and exhaustion.

This continued into the 19^th century until child labour was banned in England. Later on adults brought up the idea of the need of a child to learn, and then education came along. Martin Luther declared that salvation depends on each person’s own reading of the scriptures, in which he meant that a child has to be educated in other to find salvation on his own so that his soul will not be eternally damned.

Employers say schooling as a way of creating a better worker. To them, the most crucial lessons were; following instructions, tolerance of long hours of tedious work and so on. They implied that children should learn moral lessons and discipline such as Latin and Mathematics that would exercise their minds and turn them into scholars. with the use of schooling, people began to think of learning as children’s work where by the child is forced to follow some set of rules in a designated environment, they were given little time to play(which is referred to as recess) and any form of play in the classroom attracts a severe penalty. Therefore the idea of exploration and discovering things which is in the child is replaced by inculcation. One master in Germany kept records of the punishment he meted out during his 51years of teaching, a partial list of which included; 911,527 blows with a rod. 124,010 blows with a cane, 20,989 taps with a ruler, 136,715 blows with the hand, 10,235blows to the mouth, 7,905 boxes on the ear, and 1,118,800 blows to the head. Clearly, that master was proud of all the ‘educating’ he has done.

Although the harsh methods of teaching has reduced in some schools through the years , children are still made to study in a controlled environment, with set of rules and made to follow a curriculum against their will because they do not have a say in it. The lesson that the child must learn are determined by professional educators, not by students  so education today is still, as much as ever a matter of inculcation.

In conclusion, I learnt about a school named SUDBURY VALLEY SCHOOL in which children are left to discover and learn things on their own without any instruction. The school is built on these three basic tenets; education freedom, democratic governance and personal responsibility and their graduates show to be fulfilled, effective adults in their larger culture.

So now the question is; does our world need robots or free thinking intellectuals?

                                                                                                     

GREATEST LOVE

                                                    

With all the fuss about Valentine's day, along the line it has lost its meaning and true intent even the person that is being celebrated can't be so proud of the love it is now . Could he have died  in vain?
'St. Valentine's day is a liturgical celebration of one or more early christian saints named Valentinus. The most popular martyrology associated with Saint Valentine was that he was  imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministrying to Christians who were persecuted under the Roman Empire; during his imprisonment, he is said to  have healed the daughter of his jailer Asterius. Legend states that before his execution he wrote 'from your valentine' as a farewell to her'.
Valentinus exhibited the God-kind of love and he died for what he believed in so strongly.  The fulfillment of the law is love, according to the Bible Jesus urged  his followers to love people not only those who do good to them  but even their enemies because that is the greatest love of all 'even though we were yet sinners Christ died for us'.
Valentinus even healed the daughter of his jailer, he could have left her the way she was because she is the daughter of his tormentor but he loved his enemy even his daughter. that is how God expects us to live our life, a life that pleases him. For whosoever that doesn't love is in darkness and not of God.
In our generation where love is gradually turning into a myth and only exists in storybooks, novels and movies, this is an example and a  constant reminder that love is the only thing keeping the world together.
When you put a smile on someone's face, when you give hope or offer words of encouragement to someone without expecting anything in return, that is an act of love. You don't have to buy the most expensive gift in the world, FOR LOVE IS NOT IN THE WORTH OF A THING BUT IN ITS TRUE INTENT.