All Apologies and love...

(I'm not feeling well. The sudden shift in the weather or climate, I should say, affects my body in nefarious ways: clogged upper respiratory system, headaches and, omens of, God forbids, an asthma episode.)

I arrived in the school earlier a few minutes earlier today. I took the time to read some of my pupils' letters which I have asked them to write last week. I was reading them and I have noticed that their letters have two things in common: love and apologies.

These themes are also present in their messages posted on the teacher's day message wall. What impressed me was the expressiveness, the way they write those words directly to their teachers. I wondered if they were as expressive to their parents as they were to their teachers. 

I took a few minutes to think about it and to ask why all apologies. I guess its because the children are bombarded with rules. school rules, classroom rules, etc, and to their minds any infraction of a rule is an offense to the teacher because I cannot imagine a child offending a teacher, I mean not in the way adult offends one another. 

I have a soft spot for my pupils even though I get angry at them and shout at them but at the end of the day, I cannot help but tell them I'm sorry and that my words are triggered by my high blood pressure. But words hurt even at least for me, there are times when I thought I have been too rough to a pupil that it gives me troubled sleep and I have to seek that pupil out first thing in the morning to apologize but of course children are wonderful people they forget easily. 

I think it was the philosopher Nietzsche who said that if we do not forget, we go crazy and children are good at that. I mean, its not that we beat the hell out of them, but we do use words sharply, but they move on much faster. I still get visits from former pupils who laughs at their experiences from the jokes to the shouts. Of course, I cannot say that all of them have forgiving hearts, some might have kept a grudge or more.

As I was reading the letters, I could not help but smile at the pledges of everlasting friendship. I hope that they do keep their promises. Childhood friends are the best ones for they have shared the earliest phase of their lives.

Children become adult and once they have realized how powerful these two words are: love and apology, they become selfish with them, they give them sparingly or wrongly.

  

Adult not only loses their childhood imagination, to a degree they also lose their childlike ability to empathize.