Welcome to the Our Moral Compass Podcast. Each daily reading focuses on a different quote on how we can best apply it to our own moral compass and one of the five areas in Social Emotional Learning: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills and Responsible Decision Making. Thank you for listening and we hope you consider subscribing to the podcast for future episodes.
What Children Can Teach Us
“Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.”
-Black Elk
Often times when we are looking towards things that help us develop our own moral compass we often look from within. There is nothing wrong with this whatsoever and it is essential in our development as human beings to do so. However, we need to keep in mind that it is also the people around us and interact with that also help us to formulate our moral compass too. One group of such individuals that may get overlooked is our children. Now if you are an educator like myself this more than likely is not the case because they teach us something every day about life. Well….at least they do for me. Indian Warrior, medicine man and educator of the Sioux tribe Black Elk’s quote reminds that children and their hearts are pure and often reveal things about ourselves that we may have missed.
Their innocence is something that to me is magical and awe inspiring. They have this sense of curiosity and wonder about life as they are experiencing many things for the first time. We all were children once and had all of these similar qualities but over time we see to lose some of the magic or awe. The song that reminds me of what children do for us is The Greatest Love Of All by the late Whitney Houston. There are certain lyrics within it that lend itself to reminding us of how special children are and what it was like to once be a child:
I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be
The interesting thing is that even though these lyrics were written in the 1980’s, these are still things we try to instill within our children today. What I find is interesting in particular is that it encourages us to teach them about themselves and the beauty that they have inside but I think that children do the same for us. And remember the greatest love of all is learning to love ourselves which I believe children also remind us to do. If we take the time to have conversations with them, interact with them on a daily basis, we will also learn about ourselves and continually grow in what we value and cherish about life. It is the specific lyric of “letting the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be” is what resonates most with me most because it is through that laughter that shows how wonderful it is to be alive and that we should always go through our experiences, no matter how many times we may have experienced some, like its the first time. In doing so, our life can be better for it.
What does this quote mean to you and how can you apply today’s message towards defining/refining your own moral compass?
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Music from https://filmmusic.io
“Relaxing Piano Music” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
A special thank you to Feedspot for recognizing the Our Moral Compass podcast as one of the Top 10 Social Emotional Learning Podcasts on the internet. It is an honor to be amongst the other podcasts on this list as we all strive to make this world a better place.
Becoming The Change 