My biggest Life Lesson came during lunch-break at School

I spent 13 years in School. These included countless hours inside the classroom learning physics, chemistry, history and mathematics. I loved most of the subjects. 

I memorized dates in History but was fascinated by stories of warriors and kings when they came alive.

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was easy to remember from the comic book than the text book as I saw the illustrations and imagined a world from a bygone era.

I practiced algorithms and theorems and a few odd compounds in Chemistry but loved most when we mixed compounds in the lab and watched magic happen.

I spent days pouring over geography trying to understand the formation of clouds and volcanoes. I dreamt of being David Livingstone and discovering a new world on Earth like he discovered the Congo basin.

I loved Computers primarily because I had a huge crush on my teacher and I so wanted to impress her.

I loved Algebra because I was challenged by a girl and it was good fun to sometimes beat her. Though, I have never understood why we learnt Algebra.

I hated Physics primarily because the teacher could not care to explain.

I didn't much care for Hindi because the teacher spent most the class session telling us stories from his life rather than teaching. So on and so forth.

Yet, all I was expected to do was memorize and regurgitate it back during examinations. The hundreds of hours inside the classroom didn't give me a single life lesson that is worth remembering. My biggest life lesson came during our lunch break at School in my 6th grade.

Every lunch break, after gobbling up our lunch, we used to form two teams and race around our colonial styled school building in a relay format. 5-6 people in a team exchanging batons after completing a full school circle. Darting between scores of students, who were playing, running, jumping around, it was our own little Olympics. This particular year, our team was in shambles. We were consistently losing every single day of the school year and our hopes were grim. We tried making team changes but nothing seemed to click. One fine afternoon, we finished lunch and gathered around for a daily race. Something was different that day. I felt a sense of calm and in a moment of consciousness, I said to myself, “we will win today!”

The race began and with each exchange of baton the other team was expanding their lead. The fastest runners from each team were reserved for the last. The last person in my friend’s team got the baton and he raced away feeling confident of winning yet another race. I received the baton just as my opponent was making his first turn. I closed my eyes for a split second and repeated, “We will win today!”

When I opened my eyes, everyone around me turned into a blur – children jumping around, playing, walking – everyone just disappeared. I saw only my opponent as he was making the turn. I ran. I ran with a sense of calm confidence. I felt my feet flying just inches above the ground. At the third turn, I overtook my opponent. I saw from the corner my eye; he had frozen in his tracks. I knew we had won not just the race but every race thereafter. We won and I knew it.

Whenever I think back at my school days, this memory is the most vivid. For years, I didn’t understand why I remembered this incident so vividly. It always comes alive like it happened yesterday. Now, I know. My body, my mind and my soul remembers this incident because it is my biggest life lesson.

It gave me my self-belief. The belief that I can make Impossible POSSIBLE!

Every time I am down in the dumps, pushed to a corner, when things seem impossible, this single experience gives me the strength and resilience to fight back, to pull myself up, to rise above and to come alive again. An experience from an inane activity that happened during lunch break at school.

I believe we all have these moments from our childhood. If we look around, our children’s lives are rich with powerful learning moments that fundamentally shape them, transform them, and give them a sense of their identity. Our children are curious and hungry to learn, discover, make sense of this world. The constant questions, the insatiable hunger to know, the Whys - these are all indicators of life's longing for itself. 

It's time schools are transformed to be nurturing environments for such powerful moments not just at lunch break but also within the classroom. 

It's time we recognize that children are dropping out of the school system because they are not feeling engaged, challenged and inspired. They are not getting their powerful learning moments that will nurture them and help them discover who they are.

It's time we accept that if we want to save this planet, we need to invest in creating experiences of empathy, love, caring and self-belief in our children.

If we can't change then maybe we just need to have longer lunch breaks so the universe can nurture its children, inspite of us. Just like Kahlil Gibran’s memorable words…

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”