Andy Smallman

The laughter of children has always been good medicine for anything that ails me, perhaps some form of meditation or prayer. It’s like a fresh breath of cool air on a warm spring day, or as pure as water formed from melting snow running down the mountainside.

To illustrate this, I offer you this short video. Go take a look and pay special attention to your reactions as you watch it.

See if it doesn’t tap into something else that is natural to being human.

It turns education around to say that the first focus of schools should not be on academics, but that’s just what I say at Puget Sound Sound Community School, the school I direct and co-founded with Melinda in 1994. But if you really stop and think about it, it makes sense. Students who do not feel safe or supported at school are going to have a difficult time learning academics, anyway, try as we might to cram them in. So the first focus of schools should be to provide a nurturing environment.

Humans are natural learners. Tap into that and we learn naturally and eagerly. Provide the right kind of support, beginning with the environment, and things like academics take care of themselves.

When I was a little boy I experienced significant night terrors for about two years.

My parents took me to a child psychiatrist who recommended family counseling so we tried that. A behavior modification program was created. Still, the terrors got so bad that I was hospitalized for a week when I was in 4th grade, studied by doctors and nurses to try to determine the root of the problem. One memorable experience in the hospital was when electrodes were attached to my head to study my brainwaves. Nothing significantly wrong was determined and I returned home. Ultimately, I seemed to grow out of the night terrors, but the experience cast a dark shadow on me for years.

For instance, I was horribly embarrassed by it, even into my young adulthood, and never talked about it. It was my deepest and darkest secret. But during college I started to make peace with it and even started to appreciate how the experience helped make me who I am. I believe the empathy and compassion I have for children is a direct result of my experience with night terrors, of undergoing counseling as a child, and from the experience of spending that week in the hospital.

I learned in college that holographic images can be recorded on glass.

Looking at them, they appear 3-D despite being in 2-D form, and seen from different angles give you the look of seeing the image from different perspectives. Further, if the glass that holds the image is broken, each piece contains the whole image. It’s not like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that have to be reassembled to form a whole. Each piece CONTAINS the whole. Learn more here.

My belief is that each person is one piece of glass of a broken hologram, each of us containing the whole. Our job as individuals is to contribute positively to the whole, doing our part to reunite or repair it through positive, conscious action.

That’s the highest human calling.

I’ve been thinking about the exchange of energy that takes place during an act of giving and receiving.

In short, I think the giver and the receiver are doing pretty much the same thing. The receiver “gives” something by accepting the gift, and the giver “receives” something by providing the gift. It’s an immediate cycle in which both parties take on a level of giving/receiving responsibility.

Think about it. You can’t give something unless someone is willing to receive it, thus giving you the gift of accepting your gift.

Sometimes a great gift you can give someone is to receive what they want to give you.

A couple years back, a student in one of my kindness classes shared her understanding of the Buddhist protocol known as “Right Speech.”

She learned that the best way to practice “Right Speech” is to ask herself three questions about what she is about to say before saying it:

Is it true?
Is it necessary?
Is it kind?

The answer to all three questions must be YES or one should remain silent.

This is something I’m working on myself. And I’m expanding it to include email (and text messages and blog posts and…).

Is it true?
Is it necessary?
Is it kind?