The Joy of Learning Diaries is a website where students can post their reflections on My Good School’s reading program every Sunday. They can literally post anything they want. We publish the Joy Of Learning Diaries, and our blogs go in an extensive diary where many students can post.
We connect the Joy Of Reading with the joy of writing by -
We learn all the values needed,
After going to My Good School, we all succeeded!
There are several things you can do,
Each item is new!
We can read and write,
We are bright!
We can design and create,
After all, My Good School is great!
11.00 AM SWAMI AND FRIENDS by RK Narayan
11.40 AM The Art Of Focus by Gauranga Das
12.00 PM Hari Ghaas Ki Chhappar Wali Jhopadi Aur Bouna Pahad Hindi Edition by Vinod Kumar Shukla
Read With Us!
Rishona Chopra Grade VI Gyanshree School
For those who’ve read part 1- I hope you found the courage to read it whole.
Stay tuned and read this too because, you know, to those who think reading about death is not worth it at all when you can read about a bright things-my, friend, death is the ultimatum of a life, and every passing day just leads us one step closer to it, this might make you think-
“Then what is the point of living happily when the ending will just be sad?”
See, while watching a trailer, you do not just get the whole idea about the storyline until you watch the entire movie, so, look, neither the beginning is the central part, nor is the climax (Though people seem to make it) it is what happens in the middle.
There it is; that’s how life is not to be seen from the perspective-
How was someone born?
Or
How had someone died?
It should be seen as - How
had someone lived?
The time we have to live is limited, but how to live in the given time is in our hands.
That is how you find - light in the dark,
the joyfulness in the screeching voice of a lark,
the cheerful desire of the people who sank in the mournful fire
- the sweetness of life in the bitter truth of death.
Monday Mornings
As the alarm buzzed, I opened my eyes, hoping to get some more sleep. Alas! It was six thirty already. I am always very hesitant about Monday mornings. On one side, I hate getting back to the same basic boring routine after all the relaxation and fun one had on Saturday and Sunday. Although Mondays do make me look forward to getting all freshened up and make me want to have a good kick start for the upcoming week. Every week I find Mondays the most challenging day (Trust me, making the decision almost 52 times a year isn't a cakewalk!). Nevertheless, I have to admit that although Mondays end up getting tiring, it indeed is a lot of fun getting back to the same basic boring routine and meeting all my friends again. Mondays make you ( me at least) realise that your life is still going on, and you have another chance to learn from your mistakes & just keep going.
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Love is universal and eternal; it is always manifesting and identical in its essence. And it is a Divine Force; for the distortions, we see in its apparent workings belong to its instruments. Love does not manifest in human beings alone; it is everywhere. Its movement is there in plants, perhaps in the very stones; in animals, it is easy to detect its presence. All the deformations of this great and divine Power come from the obscurity, ignorance, and selfishness of the limited instrument. Love, the eternal force, has no clinging, no desire, no hunger for possession, no self-regarding attachment; it is, in its pure movement, the seeking for the union of the self with the Divine, a seeking absolute and regardless of all other things. Love divine gives itself and asks for nothing. We do not need to say what human beings have made of it; they have turned it into an ugly and repulsive thing. And yet even in human beings, the first contact of love does bring down something of its purer substance; they become capable of forgetting themselves; for a moment, its divine touch awakens and magnifies all that is fine and beautiful. But afterwards, human Nature comes to the surface, full of its impure demands, asking for something in exchange, bartering what it gives, clamouring for its own inferior satisfaction, distorting and soiling what was divine.
The Mother
CWM, Vol-3, Pg. 69-70
The force of love in the world is trying to find consciousnesses capable of receiving this divine movement in its purity and expressing it. This race of all beings towards love, this irresistible push and seeking out in the world’s heart and all hearts, is the impulse given by a Divine love behind the human longing and seeking. It touches millions of instruments, always trying, always failing. Still, this constant touch prepares these instruments, and suddenly, one day, there will awake in them the capacity of self-giving, the capacity of loving.
The movement of love is not limited to human beings and is perhaps less distorted in other worlds than in humans. Look at the flowers and trees. When the sun sets, and all becomes silent, sit down for a moment and put yourself into communion with Nature: you will feel rising from the earth, from below the roots of the trees and mounting upward and coursing through their fibres up to the highest outstretching branches, the aspiration of intense love and longing,—a longing for something that brings light and gives happiness, for the light that is gone and they wish to have back again. There is a yearning so pure and intense that if you can feel the movement in the trees, your own being will go up in an ardent prayer for the peace, light, and love that are unmanifested here. Once you have come in contact with this large, pure and true Divine love, if you have felt it even for a short time and in its smallest form, you will realise what an abject thing human desire has made of it. It has become in human Nature something low, brutal, selfish, violent, ugly, or else it is something weak and sentimental, made up of the pettiest feeling, brittle, superficial, and exacting. And this baseness and brutality or this self-regarding weakness they call love!
The Mother
CWM, Vol-3, Pg. 71-72
M.S. SRINIVASAN
We all experience failure in our life. When we think our life has come to an end. The first time is obviously the hardest. You feel devastated, angry, jealous, and traumatized. You blame others for what has happened. In time you start blaming yourself. Don't think the time and energy you're wasting are worth wasting. These days when youngsters experience failure or when something doesn't go according to their plan, they start believing their life is ruined. They start thinking weird and foolish things. They don't worry about how their decisions will affect those around them.
Ultimately life isn't supposed to go according to plan, even for those born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Failure is a risky stop where all our lives stop for a bit. We need to learn to deal with disappointments in life because we will face them not once, not twice, but throughout our lives. After all these disappointments lie some valuable lessons like gratitude, self-enlightenment and a better version of ourselves. Failure is inevitable, so instead of sitting and feeling sad about it, get up and try again.
Like Albert Einstein said, "You never fail until you stop trying".
This is for you,
When anything happened, you knew.
You taught me to be true,
And that's how I grew
You cared for me,
You are the one that makes me feel free!
The kindest one ever,
When I needed you, you were always there whatsoever.
You make me positive,
You are so progressive,
You give me a new sense of hope,
There is no one like you on the globe!
There is no reason for this,
It's just a natural bliss,
That's probably why you are my mother,
You are like no other!
Rishona Chopra
Grade VI
Gyanshree School
Swami is a boy who just loves to have fun, be it with friends or be it all on his own. He enjoys playing and wandering more than anything else, so whenever Monday comes around the corner, Swami feels frustrated as he has to walk through a tough day filled with studies and homework. But after all, he endures Monday Mornings.
I like Mondays because I have a lot of activities in school that day, plus on Monday we have a lot of things to share with our friends, so it’s never boring. We all should like Monday because it is the start of a new day, a new week and maybe, new learnings and opportunities.
Swami may not be a very ambitious young boy, but he is happy and optimistic because of his friends and loves playing, so he always has something to be positive about. Similarly, what makes me think positive is the idea of anything different from my usual routine. I enjoy it whenever we go out or when I have something new to do. Some different classes in school or meeting new people always excites me. That’s what makes me think positive, and I love that.
Imagine your brain to be a dense jungle. When you want to make a goal and start working towards it, it's like walking through the wilderness; it takes energy to convince yourself to do it. Since our brain hates wasting energy, it comes up with a trick. Every time you cross a path in the jungle, you make it easier to travel. Soon it becomes a highway which is much easier to cross. To make these highways, we need to use a wise planner and an impulsive toddler. An intelligent planner helps you to understand what we have to do to reach that goal; it helps us break down the goal into easier, manageable tasks.
The impulsive toddler will help you slowly turn those manageable tasks into habits you do without thinking. All you need is a little bit of patience. If you do have that, you will certainly reach your goals without thinking about giving up.
Thank you for reading this. It will surely help you at some point.
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The year 2019 gave me a new life (Let’s not get to that), but the following ones, 2020-21, took many of my beloved ones’ lives away!
I’ll roll back the rim of my life to the year 2021. Someone really close to us all was my grandmother’s niece, Kanchan, my aunt, just a young girl with dreams and hopes for a bright future like any other.
One odd day, she got her hand fractured, went to the hospital, and surgery was to be performed for implantation of K-wire in her hand. After that, tests were conducted, and the results diagnosed her with MEN1(Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Link Type 1 syndrome, a rare genetic disorder mainly affecting the endocrine glands). The message spread virtually on WhatsApp to us in our family group, and after reading it, all of our hearts sank in. But, not losing hope, we wished her a speedy recovery and gave her mom, and her brother hope for her stay!
Surgery after surgery, treatment after treatment, our prayers and everyone else’s, and meanwhile she was stable, with all of us crying out our mixed emotions, I sat there, scrolling through her Instagram profile-her smile, her sweet voice, and her charm-all faded behind the beeping of machines. Even though her, being in Noida, and me in Dehradun, it hurt, you know, in such situations, the gap does not matter; it’s the prayers from the bottom of hearts that do! But God plans a bummer for everyone’s lives, and his plan for hers was different. The disease could not be cured, maybe controlled, but not cured.
Reveda Bhatt
Grade 9
The Aryan School
I have often heard a story of a woman who lost her son but was so desperate to get him back that she went to Lord Buddha to bring her son to life again. In listening to her story, Lord Buddha said he would bring her son to life again only if she could get a fist full of mustard seeds from a house where no one had died. So the woman had set out on her task, she had gone to every home in each locality, but there was not a single house where someone had not died, be it the grandfather, father, mother, child, someone or other had always passed away. Lost and depressed when the woman returned to Lord Buddha, he had simply told her that human lives are like flickering lights. They light for a long time, but suddenly they extinguish. We need to learn to accept the loss and let the ones gone be always loved in our hearts. Just like Totto-Chan will always love Rocky and Yasuaki Chan.
When Ryo-chan, the janitor at Tomoe, had to leave for the War, all the students had organized a special Tea Party just for him. Everyone drank saké and shared something or the other for Ryo-chan. It was a fun time and the children continued the tradition of the Tea Party even after Ryo-chan was on the war ground. It was the last time they had ever gathered at Tomoe.
Whenever I have to drop someone at the station and bid goodbye, I feel as if they could have stayed just a little longer; no matter how many days we spent together or how much fun we had, at that point, all that matters is whether they can be here for just a bit more time because no amount of time feels enough when you are with your loved ones.
Sayonara, Sayonara is a Japanese goodbye, but it literally means 'if that's the way it is'. We have learned so much from Totto-chan, the Headmaster and Tomoe. It is even so unique that a young girl, simply through the means of her actions, has taught us friendship, responsibility, coping with loss, freedom and most importantly, love. So all we can say is Thank You and Sayonara, Totto-chan!
Anvesha Rana,
Grade 10-B,
Gyanshree School
