Happiness And Tolerance - Visionary JMMS

If someone asks, What’s Happiness? The answer for that would be Happiness is something which is around us; we just need to have the real eyes to realize that feeling from within. And if we’ve to draw happiness children would be the best portrays of happiness. Oscar Wilde one of the known authors has said  “Happiness depends upon us", in Hindi “प्रसन्नता हम पर ही निर्भर करती है|”

The word tolerance means to be patient, have the willingness to accept the differences around you. To recognize, respect and embrace the diversity that’s tolerance for us. This tolerance can intake our actions to contribute, to create a healthy and happy life.

A teammate of ours who says,” tolerance sometimes builds among these children at an early age which eventually bring us at a blissful state.” Her story fits into these two values.

Tolerance Promotes Happiness

A girl joined grade 2 in our school in the midterm session of the academic year. She was confident, quite artistic and loved to participate in outdoor activities. After a week one of her classmate complaint that she never carries the lunchbox and has lunch of other students. A teacher asked her the reason she smiled and replied “madam my lunchbox is with my brother”, on that the teacher thought she might have her lunch early. Next day during the lunch break the helping staff noticed her lunchbox was empty and her friends without creating a fuss were happily sharing the lunch with her. Later the helping staff find out the reason and told the whole story of that girl to the Class teacher.

The girl had a younger brother in the pre-primary section and both the siblings use to leave home early for school along with the other students of their neighbourhood. They use to come to school by walking which took almost an hour. Most of the times they skip their breakfast which makes the younger brother felt a bit cranky with hunger and he troubled his sister on their way to school. She simply tolerates his behaviour, to reach school on time she let him have her lunchbox which worked as a result of gratification. 

On the other side, her classmate who had grumbled with the girl's behaviour was now happily sharing the meal with her without expecting anything in return. Its proved that if we spread happiness without expecting anything in return it’ll always pay back to us. The school principal also gets to know about this incident. And this thing compels the school to realize there could be other students too who might be missing out their breakfast or not bringing lunch because of some reasons. As the students in our school are underprivileged, our school then took the decision of providing the students with a morning snack just before the assembly as well as offering supplement lunch in the school. 

Sometimes we just need to have the ability to sense our pure thoughts, and then we have to implement it through our action and those actions will reach the perfect state of happiness. We as an adult get to learn to a lot from these children. Although they don’t have a clue as to what they are doing, unknowingly and without a clue they allow us to explore to do things. The girl displayed her tolerance by love and care towards her younger brother and her classmates accepted her behaviour of not carrying lunchbox by sharing their food with a desireless state of mind. Tolerance always helps to create a balanced environment which peacefully allows us to gain happiness. Hence, it's true to say “Tolerance promotes Happiness.”

-: Visionary JMMS @ John Martyn Memorial School, Salan Gaon, Dehradun -  Ambika Gurung, Parineeta Negi, Manmohan Kaur and Bharti Dangwal  

Happiness and Tolerance: Manisha Deora

Happiness is a feeling or showing pleasure or contentment. This is what the children say

happiness is playing with friends, fun on holidays, listening to people and laughing, when someone smiles at you, playing with baby siblings, freedom to choose, being the star of the day, etc....

Every school must provide an environment to keep their students in a happy mind always. This mainly depends on the teachers who handle those students. We must appreciate their hard work. A student may be unhappy because of the following reasons, like a boring method of teaching or they did not get time to play.

‌‌We might  have noticed a thing with students where they feel very happy when the school bell rings at 3 or 4 p.m in the evening. They run like they have participated in any race to reach home. But when they come to school in the early morning, it is totally opposite. It is in the hands of the teachers to do the changes which they need in their students.

Tolerance is about appreciating that we all have different views and opinions. It is the ability, willingness or capacity to tolerate something. Sometimes, this makes children uncomfortable but through understanding tolerance, we can learn how to accept others even if we don't agree. An intolerant child may not accept the views, beliefs or behaviour which differs from their own. Ignorance and fear of other cultures, nature  and religions can lead to children developing poor attitudes towards accepting and celebrating an individual's self-worth.

 So, we should teach children about tolerance and human rights. We should encourage children to be open-minded individuals who are curious and want to learn from others apart from themselves only.  We should try asking our children about various cultures, nature and religions, so that they can understand and appreciate the different views and opinions of other cultures and religions also.

Manisha Deora

The Fabindia School