April 17, 2024

Notes By Saamya Deo

Review

6 blind men had always wanted to meet an elephant. So, the villagers took them to see the royal princess’s elephant at the palace. The first touched the top and thought of it as a strong wall. The second touched the trunk and thought that it was like a snake. The third touched the tusk and was alarmed at how deadly and sharp it was. The fourth touched the legs and said that it was just a large cow. The fifth touched the ears and exclaimed that it was like a carpet! The sixth touched the tail and was disappointed that it was just a piece of rope. They began bickering at once who was right! The king who woke up from his nap asked them how they were so sure that they were right. He told them that they should share their experiences to imagine what an elephant actually is. 

We learned that :

• There is more than one side to everything
• When we broaden our perspective, we appreciate everything more

For example, it is easier to make a puzzle when you have the picture of what the puzzle is going to look like first! Rather than making a puzzle without a model. 

Story

Two lumberjacks are having a contest to see who can chop up the most wood in one day! The younger, more able lumberjack is pretty confident that he can beat the older, more experienced lumberjack. They agree they won’t be able to look at the piles of wood that either make until the end of the day. During the day, the younger lumberjack sees the older lumberjack take many breaks. At the end of the day, the younger lumberjack is astonished to see that the older lumberjack’s pile is huge! Even bigger than his! He exclaims in shock that he saw the older lumberjack taking many breaks! The older lumberjack just laughs and says that he was actually sharpening his ax. 

Lesson

• Continuous self-care
  • Happy people are more enjoyable than sad ones
• Continuous self-development
  • The ax is like our mind, we need to “sharpen it”
  • It will help us take every situation as an opportunity to learn and grow!
  • This can really help us connect to the bigger picture as well!

RAW:

Go outside and observe one thing in nature. Take notes on it!

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Notes by Sita Somnath Buono

RECAP:

We reviewed the story of the blind men and the elephant. The men couldn’t decide on what an elephant looked like. They went to an elephant and each man touched a different part and then argued about what the elephant was and what it looked like.  The message was that there is always more than one side to a story. If we get all the different perspectives, we can enjoy life more. It’s like having more puzzle pieces to put together. To get more than one side of a story means you understand that everyone has a place in the world. Last week’s RAW’s was to pick up trash on one day. We discussed how when you think about what the earth gives us, the RAW feels very small.

STORY:

2 lumberjacks decided to have a contest to see who could chop more wood in a day. One was young and had boundless energy. The other was old but had lots of experience. The contest was in a valley where they could hear each other but couldn’t see each other. The young lumberjack could hear the older one take many breaks (there were a lot of silent moments). The younger one was convinced he would win as he didn’t take any breaks. At the end of the day, they each shared how much wood they had chopped. The young one was surprised at all the older woodcutter had chopped- way more than the younger one had!

The young lumberjack said

“How is it possible that you cut more wood than I did? I heard all the breaks you were taking!”

“Actually, I wasn’t taking breaks! I was sharpening my axe” The older one replied

THE END

MESSAGE:

There are two main things we can learn from this story. The first is continuous self-care. We ourselves are our most important tools. In society, more important than just people is happy people. The lumberjack took breaks to use his tool better. Imagine you didn’t get any sleep and then went to write an exam. What good is all the work you put in as you’d be too tired to do your best. The other thing we can learn is continuous self-development. This means we should learn from past experiences and be curious and open minded to improve. The big picture will work if we perfect and learn and this will help us do more with the puzzle (from last week’s discussion). 

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