When Life Was Simple
Starting my day in an elementary school classroom is one of my favorite things to do and is something I’ve been involved in for the past couple of weeks. I have acquired many stories through the hours that I have spent inside classrooms, whether it is through tutoring or just observing. One of my favorite memories came from a kindergarten classroom.
I was tutoring in this classroom and working on reading with the students. The task was to read the short story three times out loud and then write a sentence and draw a picture representing their favorite part. Once the students had finished, they were allowed to go back to their seat and do the rest of their classwork. As the hour was coming to a close, there were two students left at the table. The boy had finished the task, and the girl was almost done. I told the boy that he could go back to his seat since he had finished. He told me that he was going to wait for the girl to finish her assignment, because they were best friends. Then he said: “We just became best friends today, because the teacher sat us next to each other.”
My heart melted. How great is the simplicity of a kindergartener’s thoughts? Don’t you wish you could go back to the time when you became best friends with someone just because the teacher sat you next to each other? I know I found myself wishing that I could go back to a time where making friends was so simple, a time when my biggest worry of the day was what I was going to have for lunch. Making friends when you are older requires much more effort on your part, and then you have to decide whether or not they would be a good person to have as a friend. A 5 year old doesn’t have to worry about any of that. All they know is this is who they sit next to in class and that makes them friends.
Gone are the days of simplicity. Life is much more complicated now than it was back then. Days are filled with classes and homework. Then there’s the whole worrying-about-what-the-future-holds aspect of life. The simple words of a kindergartener caused me to reexamine how I approach life. Not everything needs to be complicated. Sometimes the simple route is the way to go.
I encourage you to find the simple joys in life. They’re worth it.
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