handwritten on September 26, 2019
Today was probably one of my favorite lunch bunch conversations of all time. Childhood has much wisdom (this is for sure.) I think as a society we are really judgemental when it comes to this word "purpose." We just are. We think our purpose is better than another person's purpose. We believe we have more to give. We believe our status and what we do dictates our purpose. Truth is, after today's conversation, it was just another realization about how children are just that much more full of wisdom than adults. Truth is, we all have the same amount of purpose in this lifetime. No purpose is too great or too small and certainly individuals who see their purpose as greater-well they aren't...
handwritten on September 25, 2019
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...
handwritten on September 24, 2019
If you think about the phrase "if" there is so much undue potential. Take the sentence: I had a bad day. Okay, now place the word "if" in front of it. Now it reads: "If you have a bad day...." Notice the trailing off? Notice now the independent clause turns into a dependent clause and that dependent clause cannot stand by itself. Why? It depends on something else holding it up. And that something else is...love and hope.
You see, hope allows you to look at life with a dependent clause. Place "If" in front of absolutely any phrase, and you realize you always have another option to grow and to be better and that option provides hope. "I dislike my current position" becomes "If I dislike my...
handwritten on September 23, 2019
In poetry club today we talked about the birth of jazz poetry and the art behind improv. And so I played four clips (5 minutes or so each) of great jazzers through the ages, and I asked each of them to create what they felt on paper. When I first demonstrated using pastels on a small piece of white paper, they giggled nervously. They looked around at eachother and then me and said, "Mrs. Amoscato I thought you were a good artist." I said, "You don't like my painting?" with a smile. "it's just messy" one of my other students said. "That's not art."
We got into this whole 6 minute discussion of what makes art...art. And I explained to them that some of the greatest jazz songs ever invented...
handwritten on September 22, 2019
There were two important lessons I learned from today. The first one was sitting to a pretty excellent sermon in church today about the outlook of challenges and the importance of realizing that moments where you feel hopeless are just realizations that you are living a life full of love. Because to lose hope means you have to care first. Hopelessness is not the absence of love but in the state of finding and wanting to climb the mountain towards greater goodness.
I think sometimes as humans, we fall into tiny puddles of hopelessness because life does happen and so realizing these are actually moments of care creates such a new and inspirint perspective. With the start of October coming...
