Memoirs of an Amnesiac

"When a force is exerted outside an egg, life ends. When a force is exerted inside, life begins, " so goes my opening lines for motivation in a fable that my class and I were waiting to dissect, like a frog carefully pinned on a morbid dissecting pan.

To a class of beaming sixth graders who probably only saw a hatchling come off its shell through Youtube unlike the children before who really experienced it first hand (how to wait with much chagrin), the whole concept of a hatchling coming off its shell is a totally alienable idea. The tragedy with most youths these days is that they've been far too initiated with technology that they've lost the feel of the natural and aesthetic. At that point, how I wished we had a real hatchling we were observing. The concept was too abstract to explain and I was beginning to zone out (as my brain always does, especially when I am at my moments of fancy).

One student finally asks, "Teacher, why can't we help the hatchling get off its shell? It would have been easier that way."

I answered that yes, it would have been easier if we helped the hatchling come off its shell. The problem is that we are not sure whether it is already time for it to come out. There are some things in life where you'll have to learn to let go, such as seeing someone learn lessons on his/her own. Sure, you have some Mother Theresa genes on you. But then again, helping out in this case would do more harm than good. By coming off on its own, the hatchling would come to terms with its own strength, would be able to try out how far it can go by trying to break off the shell that has become its own prison cell, extend its young wings and carve through the shell its own way to birth.

Indeed change comes from within. It would take more than your whole lifetime for you to learn from the mistakes of others and be able to apply them on your own. But the lessons that are learned out of your own risking--choosing to be part of someone's life despite the obstacles, going for that death-defying adventure, trying out something new that is totally out of your turf, and realizing in the end that all these are just part of the way you have been molded, are all worth gaining insights from.

Even getting hurt and recovering from it entails a great part of one's strength and persistence. You can't expect people to own the pain for you. In fact, you need the pain for you to grow. We can learn valuable parallelism with this from nature as when a plant delves its way towards the earth that imprisons it. A plant must learn to grope towards the light, towards a realization that for growth to happen, one must defy one's struggles.

As my last words trail behind the last thread of thoughts I had gained insight from, careful not to tread on painful reminiscences, I left a beaming class of sixth graders all too lost in thought...