I read
somewhere that a teacher is someone who teaches a language, mathematics,
science or a vocational skill; and that her role has no spiritual angle at all.
This
description of her duty made me wonder at how futile her job would be if she
were to stop at the practicality of life curtailing it from the very purpose of
existence.
When I read
Wladzimin Paulau’s words, ‘People slowly learn about life, my son/ Through the
years, as suns rise and sink.’ What injustice would I do, if I stopped at the
textual level and didn’t take a plunge further into learning from the book of
Eternity with timeless lessons printed on its fragile pages?
If in Walt
Whitman’s question, ‘Why should not a man or woman do as much as the seasons,
and effuse as much?’, if I were to only cling to the rhetoric, then how would I
reach out to the most important need of my time, to stretch my limits as far as
possible with essentials to my world’s poor and needy?
If while
explaining the number zero, I limited my explanation to its invention as one of
the most important breakthrough in the history of civilization, wouldn’t I have
failed to understand the importance of humility where one makes oneself devoid of
all great numbers of life’s dealings to achieve a one to one connection with
the creator of all?
If in a
science class, I were to dissect a cockroach to study its reproductive system
and overlook the importance of life as a gift to be treasured, I would reduce
myself to being a murderer with all my small might, killing a part of creation.
For all that
matter, if Gora Kumbhar, a Hindu saint, a potter by trade, had only
concentrated on his vocation, all his followers would have been left as empty
pots.
May I then
attempt to change my duties with my free-will and take a step further to play a
role more dignified in life? Probably then I would not have to cringe with the
knowledge that I didn’t teach it right.
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