The Gift Of Hope

They barely have drinking water. Yet their hearts are filled with gratitude!

Keeping with tradition, I visited this small school in a tiny village that my father grew up in. This annual ritual of mine enriches my life in a multitude of ways.  

I love children! I really do! It makes me happy to see hardworking kids pursuing dreams that are placed in places far and beyond the spectrum of their everyday life.

They sit upon the bare earth in tiny classrooms where dedicated teachers equipped with nothing more than a few books and a blackboard teach them. They don’t have computers, calculators, sports equipment, extra curricular activities, school development funds or any other fancy frilly stuff. Yet they are filled with love and receive what they get with immense gratitude.

A few years back I had asked these very same children what their dreams were?  Very few had answers.  When one child annoyed by my persisting questioning, and largely out of frustration told me that she wanted to be a teacher – the others simply chimed in. They all wanted to be teachers!

But even then, I knew. I knew that it was important that they be asked what their dreams were. Not because it is imperative that a twelve or thirteen year old knows exactly what she is to do with her life but because its good to have dreams upon whose wings these kids can reach places beyond their own imagination.

This time when I visited them, I found that they had given my question thought. They each aspired to pursue professions and interests of their own and the listed variety brought joy to me. It thrilled me to see girls come up before the whole school and express their intent to become doctors, lawyers and government officials. 

I intend to continue asking them this question even at the risk of being disliked.

 Because I know that as they grow, some of them will forget that they too had dreams as a child. And I hope that those who forget will remember that annoying woman who asked them about their dreams and aspirations every year. And that such remembering will cause them to pursue what they have conveniently abandoned.

After all the last thing left in Pandora’s box is hope!