Through arts, quiz bees and oratorical contests we celebrated the week-long celebration with glee. We also had some fun during the team building. Certificates of honours were given during the recognition day and it ended with a film viewing of “The Giver” on Friday.
What I think is the importance of this celebration is not so much of the honors that we all received but on how we used the talents that we have. I think it is not what we got but on the process how we got them. This is because in the end the world does not care at all in the plaques and medals and the pieces of paper that lay dusty on my showcase divider but on the heart and soul that I have. The character which I built as foundation of my personality is what matters in the end.
Presuming that I have the highest honor in all of the students yet I did it all for the sake of studying all is vain. Even if I have the highest honor yet I did it through cheating nothing is gain. But, if I have done it with love and thought of the other everything is rewarded.
Another important reminder which I have for myself during this celebration came from the movie that we have. In the “The Giver” Jonas – the main character – has the responsibility to learn all the former knowledge which is barred from the rest of their community. Only two of them has the responsibility to keepsake these knowledge and Jonas being the receiver, has his predecessor as the giver. The Giver who is now in his old age has to teach his knowledge to another so that the wisdom is continued and be beneficial to the community. But, only one has this responsibility because the leaders – called the elders – are afraid that if given to everyone, man has the tendency to be selfish and use it for himself.
The setting is that a utopian community which made its individual uniform with each other – in their words sameness. The members were genetically modified and take daily injections in the mask that these medication is for their benefit but actually this is to suppress their emotions and even to take away the sense of colors in their eyes making them only see in greyscale because colors as the Giver said is the source of difference and thus the source envy, hatred, etc.
This reminded me of how we always give priority to the logico-mathematical intelligence that we neglect the geniuses in art, music and even in the athletics. We always consider the intelligent in class in terms of their quiz performances, recitations and exams that we do not realize how hard it is to be people smart. We often refer to those which can solve the most technical problems in mathematics that we do not develop the spatial smart students that we have. We always focus on only one direction that we neglect the future that other intelligence holds in their hands.
Sometimes, we too unconsciously form in our community not unity but instead sameness. Given the list of do’s and don’ts and thus we embark on a journey single piled and robotic. When emergency comes along the way we all fall because all we know is how to make the line straight. But, if we take the journey having differences with only has the center to be united we will surely succeed for we do not only pile up but we are all connected.
So, what I think of every cluster of people to be called a community is for its each individual to find his own identity. It is a connected difference to a common center respecting the boundaries of each one but open to each other. It is not marked by sameness but by its diversity.
There is this cliché that goes like this: “We cannot all be teachers, we need farmers.” For if we are all teachers where will we get the food for the table, milk for the morning and fruits for the evening in such a way that though farming is a noble profession we also need teachers to teach us the basics of arithmetic and rhetoric.
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