The Alchemist (Currently Kindling...)
“Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.”
((from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho))
I work with 5-year-olds. I know that in their hearts nothing they want to do is impossible besides the things we (adults) tell them is impossible. Children naturally don’t believe in limitations. Anything is fair game until they are told otherwise. In many ways, we (adults) become that mysterious force that Coelho writes about. We impede on the youths’ dreams telling them what they’re capable of doing instead of allowing children to discover on their own what they’re made of. We set suffocating limitations instead of sound boundaries.
As a teacher and a will-be-one-day parent, I’m learning to find the lines between limitations and boundaries when it comes to shaping the character of my students, my children. I’m learning how to dream big hand in hand with them. Teachers and parents, we gotta learn how to stop ourselves from clipping the wings of the youth because someone else may have done that to us in the past. The truth is if we want to move hand in hand with them, we gotta learn to fly again.
