Learning To Walk

It’s really kind of odd when you think about it for a minute. I mean, we’re all just born into a random family. Just as easily, we could have been born to any other family -- in any other country, at any other time in history, and in any other good or bad situation.

Months before we screamed or whimpered our first breath, we were helplessly connected to our biological mother by a cord, which provided the very nutrients we needed to live.

And as birth pangs gave way to life, we were thrust into a mysterious, unfamiliar and unchartered world. And someone, or a group of people, began to teach us how the world works and how to navigate it.

The thing is -- children learn what they live. They learn to be hopeful about the future or to dread it. They learn to hold grudges or how to forgive. They learn the value of hard work or how to be lazy. They learn to love or to fear. They learn to take for themselves or how to give to others.

And each of us has a role to play in the story that the children in our community learn. We all express, through our lives and words, what should be valued and what things are trivial. May we never forget what we are teaching those who are learning to walk.