This bright new year is given me
To live each day with zest . . .
To daily grow and try to be
My highest and my best!
I have the opportunity
Once more to right some wrongs,
To pray for peace, to plant a tree,
And sing more joyful songs!
― William Arthur Ward
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On the anniversary of my father’s death, aged 60, I felt a cloak drape over my shoulders, a leaden winter cloak weighing me down. And rather than being able to shrug it off, it came with me everywhere. I was able to feel the threads lighten when I was laughing, or crying, but was unable to cast it off completely.
In the year my father died I’d gone from numb shock – nothing had prepared me for this expected departure – to deep, dizzying sadness, where I understood what other people who had experienced grief meant when they wrote of the sky turning from blue to black.
Slowly, I was able to enjoy the memories of the time we had spent together while my dad was sick: the hundreds of games of chess we’d played and his obsession and delight with food as eating became increasingly painful.
His requests for ice-cream combinations that may be for sale in the best gelaterias in Italy but aren’t readily available in Nottingham; his rhapsodies over toffee pavlova and his theory that McDonald’s had very deliberately set out to corner the market of people who want to eat but have lost their teeth. The trip to the country fair at Abergavenny, his childhood home in Wales, where there was still an annual garden-on-a-plate competition, and the most beautiful memory of his pride and delight at meeting my nephew, then a tiny baby, who shared his name, William.
I didn’t know that grief commonly returns, that this was my body marking the anniversary of the death of my dad the year before. It was with this sadness that I arrived one day in October at a yoga studio, neither strong nor flexible, surrounded by people whose bodies seemed as lithe as dancers’ (I’ve found out since that some of them are dancers).
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A mangy looking guy goes into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender immediately tells him, “No way. I don’t think you can pay for it.”
The guy replies, “You’re right. I don’t have any money, but if I show you something you haven’t seen before, will you give me a drink?”
The bartender is unmoved, “Only if what you show me ain’t risque.”
“Deal!” says the guy and reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a hamster. He puts the hamster on the bar and it runs to the end of the bar, climbs down the bar, runs across the room, up the piano, jumps on the key board and starts playing a tune. The hamster is really good.
The bartender is impressed and gives him a drink, “You’re right. I’ve never seen anything like that before. That hamster is truly good on the piano.”
The guy downs the drink and asks the bartender for another. “Money or another miracle, or else no drink”, says the bartender.
The guy reaches into his coat again and pulls out a frog. He puts the frog on the bar, and the frog starts to sing. He has a marvelous voice and great pitch. Truly a fine singer.
A stranger from the other end of the bar who has been watching runs over to the guy and offers him $300 for the frog. The guy says, “It’s a deal.”
He takes the three hundred and gives the stranger the frog. The stranger runs out of the bar with the frog.
The bartender is stunned, “Are you some kind of nut? You sold a singing frog for $300? It must have been worth millions. You must be crazy.”
“Not so”, says the guy. “The hamster is also a ventriloquist.”
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Credit: Source unknown. Came to us via e-mail
Humans in many countries are not starving for food or sustenance, but instead the most basic of human needs: A sense of connection with other humans. This is often expressed through an even more basic gesture of touching. Richard Renaldi’s project that requires total strangers to pose for a photograph in a warm embrace brings this out. Watch and share.
Credit: Found this video at KarmaTube
As a school teacher, or a college professor, or a trainer you may consider yourself to be in a teaching profession. But even if you are not in the teaching profession, you may be still imparting knowledge, wisdom, or guidance to others as part of what you do. You may be a manager, parent, guardian, artist, yoga teacher, author, speaker, leader, or an expert. In all such cases you may want to take note of the following six things to be a good teacher:
If you are lost, it helps to at least stop running in the wrong direction. So it may be important to know what mistakes to avoid to become a great teacher. Here are three of them:
1. Do not worry about becoming a great orator
A teacher is a communicator, but this does not mean you have to be a great orator. If you have to communicate using the spoken word then you have to make sure that your ideas are well understood, but you do not have to blow your audience away with your oratory skills. More important is to build a relationship of trust and rapport rather than obsessing about excellence in oratory skills.
“When you study great teachers… you will learn much more from their caring and hard work than from their style.” – William Glasser
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