Why Am I going to to Summerhill Festival of Childhood ?
And why should we all flock together to the Festival ?
Dear Friends,
I am Veda, an educator working in Nepal with and for the children and young students. I am the principal, or more preferably “Dai” (which means elder brother in Nepali) of Sri Matri Aurobindo Vidyalaya.
I am pleased to be invited to the Summerhill Festival of childhood and I am excited to be in the Festival for the following reasons.
To Challenge Me to be Myself
“You have to be yourself”, everybody says. We all seem to know what it means, but hardly can we become ourselves and act accordingly in this world where there are zillions of ideas confronting us. It should be a natural happening, but I find it important as humans to challenge ourselves consciously. Through a conscious effort to become oneself, a revelation occurs and one doesn’t feel the pressure from outside to fit into a certain narrative of the world. When one becomes oneself, the world reorients itself to find a place for you. Summerhill Festival is where you can be yourself or at least realise that you are not actually being yourself. You might truly be challenged to cast off your mask. Do you accept the challenge?
To be Around Young People and make myself a few years younger.
I love being around young people which is why I still feel like I just completed my teenage. Being around Young people makes you plastic, receptive, and forever a learner. Their energy is contagious. When I am tired of something, it is their movement and their crazy ideas that set me in motion. When I am settled, they disrupt. When I feel like I know something, they indicate that it is just the beginning. I am excited to be amongst these crazy young people from different parts of the world and make myself a few years younger.
To get older
Everyone loves to remain young. But, can you become young without becoming old? The irony behind remaining forever young is to forever grow. For me, without the search for a purposeful meaning of life, I won’t remain young. A child wants to become an adult and that is what keeps the child youthful, but what should I have to remain youthful. To retain that youthfulness, I should look forward to becoming a child again. From whom can I learn that? From the people who have lived longer than me and been through those phases and regained the childhoon back again. Elderly and old people are such wonderful children that I love being around them and listen to them their life stories. Summerhill festival is the place to meet many of these wonderful folks.
To question my way of Teaching and reinforce my aspiration
Being sincere to the question, “why I do something the way I do it ?” is not very easy. First to question and then to experiment new ways or to even consider that another way might be a better one is such a hard thing as humans that sometimes we realize its importance only when we are in the death bed. One can’t be a good teacher if he/she is not a good learner. A good learner, one who knows that he doesn’t know and learning is a life long journey can never become a teacher who can change the lives of young people. I work in a school which is different than schools run in my neighborhood, some students are already 15 and have just started school, some of them are first time school goers in their family, some had never seen toilets before coming to the school; the challenges are many. No matter how challenging it is, as a teacher I want to be the best for them, I want to assimilate the most modern, scientifically proven, and spiritual teaching practices from around the world. There is a great distance between my aspiration and the ground on which I am working currently. Summerhill Festival is the conference and celebration which will reinforce my aspiration and to continue my work.
Learn to teach students to be Happy
The world should be a happy place for everyone. Discovering the secret of happiness is a journey that everyone has to take on their own. The world doesn’t grant you happiness till you know yourself. The world appears just as much as one knows oneself. We tend to ignore education of happiness and finding purpose in life thinking that it can’t be learnt; one may not be able to learn it like other subjects but one can definitely make oneself ready by close observation, opening to oneself, and meditation by which it reveals itself in our lives. I want to meet people who are learning to be happy and helping others to remain happy at the Festival.
To strengthen the Philosophy of my life
I am working on myself to be selfless, to understand myself, to know my purpose, and to be able to love the world in entirety. For me love in its deepest sense is
to embrace the world without discrimination
AND
To act decisively to make the world a better place
Might sound contradictory, but thats what love does. It brings contradictions together. I am going to meet such people at the Summerhill Festival of Childhood.
To…………
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Here is the link to buy tickets and for more information about the Festival
https://summerhillfestival.com/
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