March 18, 2020

Notes by Ambika Mishra

Story

Today shankar ji shared a video with the class about a dog who is going fishing with his owner. While the man is fishing, a heron flies to the boat and steals a worm. The dog gets very upset and starts to bark as the heron flies away. The man does not see the heron and gets mad at the dog for not staying quiet. This happens over and over again. After a while the dog sees that the heron is not eating the worms, instead, it is giving them to its chicks. The chicks were being picky and were not eating the worms and the Heron seemed hassled. The dog understood that the heron was just trying to feed the chicks and with that thought pushes a crab toward the heron as they row away. Chicks loved the crab! The heron, feeling gratitude for the generosity of the dog, flew up to the boat and dropped off a lot of fish. When the man turns around he sees the big pile of fish. Dog and heron had formed a bond of friendship and understanding!

Lessons from the story

In the video, the dog and the heron weren’t friends to begin with and their friendship grew with understanding. The best ways to make/be a good friend is:

1. Being able to see the things from others’ point of view.
2. Be trustworthy
3. Be kind, loyal, and supportive
4. Be selfless (think of others before yourself)
5. Be forgiving/patient
6. Encourage your friend to be their best.

Being friends vs. being friendly

• Being someone’s friend is exclusive but being friendly is inclusive, it includes everyone whether you like them or not.
• Even if someone may not be friends with you (or even mean to you), you can “be friendly” to them by being compassionate.
• It is easy to be friendly to everyone if we are able to see things from their perspective instead of judging them. Just like the dog saw things from the heron’s perspective, we should see things from the other persons perspective too.
• Another way to be friendly is to focus on only good qualities in others, not the negativity.

Practice

Our practice was to tell everyone in our house something we liked about them. We felt good giving a compliment and whoever got the complement felt good to get it. This shows being friendly is easy when we focus on goodness of others and makes everyone happy.

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Notes by Keshav Ganesh

Story — Video

There was a dog on a fishing boat. There was a fisherman who was fishing.

When the man wasn’t looking, a bird came and stole some worms. The dog saw this and started barking at it and the bird flew away. Then the man said “Shhhhh”. All of this happened another time and the dog barked again. When the bird flew away, the dog saw the bird feeding the worms to it’s chicks. When the dog saw that, he took some more worms and put it at the edge of the boat for the bird to take. So the bird took the worms, a few minutes later, the bird came and gave the dog a lot of fish.

Value

Be friendly

Were the dog and bird friends in the beginning? No

Why? Because the bird took the worms.

Were the dog and bird friends at the end? Yes

Why? Because the bird gave fish and the dog gave more worms.

What is the difference from being a friend and being friendly?

If you’re friends with someone you can still get mad at them. But if you’re friendly, you will not be mad at anyone, instead caring and nice.

Look at it from a different perspective.

Practice

You have 5 minutes to tell everyone their good qualities.