A Teacher affects eternity

A Teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

-Henry Adams

Found this beautiful quote in the book I am reading "Tuesdays with Morrie", a conversation between a professor and his student on the meaning and purpose of life.

Don't we remember our teachers' or elders' wise words time to time? The deep influence stays with us always.

A kind word from a person we respect goes such a long way!

I enjoy telling stories to kids in my spare time; and the innocent, heartfelt smiles on their faces when they hear a good one, makes it all worth doing. That makes me go on, because I can see the influence it might be on them, and the lessons and marks a good story can leave!

And interestingly, each session is a learning for me. We did butterfly tales last Saturday, and the way all of them listened with wonder was so heart warming. We then had an activity, where they had to color a big butterfly together, they decided on making a rainbow butterfly. These 4-7 year olds worked like a perfect team, they decided the colors together and gave each other turns and stood up to defend the other if one was being unfair. It was no competition, and I was in awe of this lovely team working together, listening to each other, working together. I also observed, when you are teaching the little hearts, you need to give them all equal attention, listen to each of their tune, or it starts hurting them. Is it not true for us adults as well? It is when we do not get proper attention, we start getting insecure. I read today in Tuesdays with Morrie, "People are mean only when threatened". May be that is what competition does! I wish we all could just be ourselves and do things because it makes us happy and not because there is a race we need to win! Ironically, if we lived like that, there is no race we won't win!

The little kids taught me a beautiful lesson that I would always remember.