I was talking with a music teacher today about life lessons and school in particular. She told me a story she taught today in her classroom which I viewed as somewhat of a parable. A great lesson of whimsy and so I felt inclined to share. 

She placed her three students in three different positions in the room. There was a music stand positioned at the corner of the room. The first student was so close to the stand he could reach it. The second student was just a few steps away from the first student and the final student was all the way across the room. She gave each student a task and that was to touch the same stand. They could only do so using two steps. 

The first student looked at her like she was crazy. Yet, he reached out his arm and touched the stand. "That was simple" he said. The second student took two giant steps and managed to touch the stand. The third student took two giant leaps and missed. He took two more giant leaps from the same place and just missed it again. He was offered a third try and still-he could not reach the stand. 

"Each of you was given the same task, but you were in completely different spots in the room." Do you think it was fair for me to ask each of you to do the exact same thing? They all answered, "No." And yet, we constantly ask each of our students to be able to play the same song and get there in the same way. You may be the student starting out right next to the stand, but you also may be the student who is all the way across the room. Now how do you feel?

The lesson: there is patience and love when you realize that everyone is always at a different place in life. Expecting every student or every human to reach the same goal is just ridiculous. But we ask them to do it anyways. It's always interesting when a current philosophy is placed into a story. Sometimes, from a story, we realize just how ridiculous it is to insist everyone reach the same place. Some of us aren't ready. And this is not to say we should not hold high standards. But perhaps your high standard for one individual remains completely different for another. Different people require different motivations and require different life purposes. There is whimsy in thinking about diversity spatially. And understanding the small and big steps needed to get somewhere. And that somewhere is different for just about every human walking on this earth.