On Children

 Kahlil Gibran

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.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Stroke of insight

Stroke of insight

_by Jill Bolte Taylor

This is a prepared text of Jill Bolte Taylor at Tedxtalks.

I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who has been diagnosed with a brain disorder, schizophrenia. And as a sister and as a scientist, I wanted to understand, why is it that I can take my dreams, I can connect them to my reality, and I can make my dreams come true — what is it about my brother’s brain and his schizophrenia that he cannot connect his dreams to a common, shared reality, so they instead become delusions?

So I dedicated my career to research into the severe mental illnesses. And I moved from my home state of Indiana to Boston where I was working in the lab of Dr. Francine Benes, in the Harvard Department of Psychiatry. And in the lab, we were asking the question, What are the biological differences between the brains of individuals who would be diagnosed as normal control, as compared to the brains of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective, or bipolar disorder?

So we were essentially mapping the microcircuitry of the brain, which cells are communicating with which cells, with which chemicals, and then with what quantities of those chemicals. So there was a lot of meaning in my life because I was performing this kind of research during the day. But then in the evenings and on the weekends I traveled as an advocate for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

But on the morning of December 10 1996 I woke up to discover that I had a brain disorder of my own. A blood vessel exploded in the left half of my brain. And in the course of four hours I watched my brain completely deteriorate in its ability to process all information. On the morning of the hemorrhage I could not walk, talk, read, write or recall any of my life. I essentially became an infant in a woman’s body.

If you’ve ever seen a human brain, it’s obvious that the two hemispheres are completely separate from one another. And I have brought for you a real human brain. [Thanks.] So, this is a real human brain. This is the front of the brain, the back of the brain with a spinal cord hanging down, and this is how it would be positioned inside of my head. And when you look at the brain, it’s obvious that the two cerebral cortices are completely separate from one another. For those of you who understand computers, our right hemisphere functions like a parallel processor. While our left hemisphere functions like a serial processor. The two hemispheres do communicate with one another through the corpus collosum, which is made up of some 300 million axonal fibers. But other than that, the two hemispheres are completely separate. Because they process information differently, each hemisphere thinks about different things, they care about different things, and dare I say, they have very different personalities. [Excuse me. Thank you. It's been a joy.]

Our right hemisphere is all about this present moment. It’s all about right here right now. Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information in the form of energy streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems. And then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like. What this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like. I am an energy being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, all we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect. We are whole. And we are beautiful.

My left hemisphere is a very different place. Our left hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past, and it’s all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment. And start picking details and more details and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information. Associates it with everything in the past we’ve ever learned and projects into the future all of our possibilities. And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It’s that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It’s that little voice that says to me, “Hey, you gotta remember to pick up bananas on your way home, and eat ‘em in the morning.” It’s that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I have to do my laundry. But perhaps most important, it’s that little voice that says to me, “I am. I am.” And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me “I am,” I become separate. I become a single solid individual separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you.

And this was the portion of my brain that I lost on the morning of my stroke.

On the morning of the stroke, I woke up to a pounding pain behind my left eye. And it was the kind of pain, caustic pain, that you get when you bite into ice cream. And it just gripped me and then it released me. Then it just gripped me and then released me. And it was very unusual for me to experience any kind of pain, so I thought OK, I’ll just start my normal routine. So I got up and I jumped onto my cardio glider, which is a full-body exercise machine. And I’m jamming away on this thing, and I’m realizing that my hands looked like primitive claws grasping onto the bar. I thought “that’s very peculiar” and I looked down at my body and I thought, “whoa, I’m a weird-looking thing.” And it was as though my consciousness had shifted away from my normal perception of reality, where I’m the person on the machine having the experience, to some esoteric space where I’m witnessing myself having this experience.

And it was all every peculiar and my headache was just getting worse, so I get off the machine, and I’m walking across my living room floor, and I realize that everything inside of my body has slowed way down. And every step is very rigid and very deliberate. There’s no fluidity to my pace, and there’s this constriction in my area of perceptions so I’m just focused on internal systems. And I’m standing in my bathroom getting ready to step into the shower and I could actually hear the dialog inside of my body. I heard a little voice saying, “OK, you muscles, you gotta contract, you muscles you relax.”

And I lost my balance and I’m propped up against the wall. And I look down at my arm and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can’t define where I begin and where I end. Because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall. And all I could detect was this energy. Energy. And I’m asking myself, “What is wrong with me, what is going on?” And in that moment, my brain chatter, my left hemisphere brain chatter went totally silent. Just like someone took a remote control and pushed the mute button and — total silence.

And at first I was shocked to find myself inside of a silent mind. But then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful there.

Then all of a sudden my left hemisphere comes back online and it says to me, “Hey! we got a problem, we got a problem, we gotta get some help.” So it’s like, OK, OK, I got a problem, but then I immediately drifted right back out into the consciousness, and I affectionately referred to this space as La La Land. But it was beautiful there. Imagine what it would be like to be totally disconnected from your brain chatter that connects you to the external world. So here I am in this space and any stress related to my, to my job, it was gone. And I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and the many stressors related to any of those, they were gone. I felt a sense of peacefulness. And imagine what it would feel like to lose 37
years of emotional baggage! I felt euphoria. Euphoria was beautiful — and then my left hemisphere comes online and it says “Hey! you’ve got to pay attention, we’ve got to get help,” and I’m thinking, “I got to get help, I gotta focus.” So I get out of the shower and I mechanically dress and I’m walking around my apartment, and I’m thinking, “I gotta get to work, I gotta get to work, can I drive? can I drive?”

And in that moment my right arm went totally paralyzed by my side. And I realized, “Oh my gosh! I’m having a stroke! I’m having a stroke!” And the next thing my brain says to me is, “Wow! This is so cool. This is so cool. How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain from the inside out?”

And then it crosses my mind: “But I’m a very busy woman. I don’t have time for a stroke!” So I’m like, “OK, I can’t stop the stroke from happening so I’ll do this for a week or two, and then I’ll get back to my routine, OK.”

So I gotta call help, I gotta call work. I couldn’t remember the number at work, so I remembered, in my office I had a business card with my number on it. So I go in my business room, I pull out a 3-inch stack of business cards. And I’m looking at the card on top, and even though I could see clearly in my mind’s eye what my business card looked like, I couldn’t tell if this was my card or not, because all I could see were pixels. And the pixels of the words blended with the pixels of the background and the pixels of the symbols, and I just couldn’t tell. And I would wait for what I call a wave of clarity. And in that moment, I would be able to reattach to normal reality and I could tell, that’s not the card, that’s not the card, that’s not the card. It took me 45 minutes to get one inch down inside of that stack of cards.

In the meantime, for 45 minutes the hemorrhage is getting bigger in my left hemisphere. I do not understand numbers, I do not understand the telephone, but it’s the only plan I have. So I take the phone pad and I put it right here, I’d take the business card, I’d put it right here, and I’m matching the shape of the squiggles on the card to the shape of the squiggles on the phone pad. But then I would drift back out into La La Land, and not remember when I come back if I’d already dialed those numbers.

So I had to wield my paralyzed arm like a stump, and cover the numbers as I went along and pushed them, so that as I would come back to normal reality I’d be able to tell, yes, I’ve already dialed that number. Eventually the whole number gets dialed, and I’m listening to the phone, and my colleague picks up the phone and he says to me, “Whoo woo wooo woo woo.” [laughter] And I think to myself, “Oh my gosh, he sounds like a golden retriever!” And so I say to him, clear in my mind I say to him. “This is Jill! I need help!” And what comes out of my voice is, “Whoo woo wooo woo woo.” I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh, I sound like a golden retriever.” So I couldn’t know, I didn’t know that I couldn’t speak or understand language until I tried.

So he recognizes that I need help, and he gets me help. And a little while later, I am riding in an ambulance from one hospital across Boston to Mass General Hospital. And I curl up into a little fetal ball. And just like a balloon with the last bit of air just, just right out of the balloon I felt my energy lift and I felt my spirit surrender. And in that moment I knew that I was no longer the choreographer of my life. And either the doctors rescue my body and give me a second chance at life or this was perhaps my moment of transition.

When I awoke later that afternoon I was shocked to discover that I was still alive. When I felt my spirit surrender, I said goodbye to my life, and my mind is now suspended between two very opposite planes of reality. Stimulation coming in through my sensory systems felt like pure pain. Light burned my brain like wildfire and sounds were so loud and chaotic that I could not pick a voice out from the background noise and I just wanted to escape. Because I could not identify the position of my body in space, I felt enormous and expensive, like a genie just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through the sea of silent euphoria. Harmonic. I remember thinking there’s no way I would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.

But I realized “But I’m still alive! I’m still alive and I have found Nirvana. And if I have found Nirvana and I’m still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana.” I picture a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at any time. And that they could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace. And then I realized what a tremendous gift this experience could be, what a stroke of insight this could be to how we live our lives. And it motivated my to recover.

Two and a half weeks after the hemorrhage, the surgeons went in and they removed a blood clot the size of a golf ball that was pushing on my language centers. Here I am with my mama, who’s a true angel in my life. It took me eight years to completely recover.

So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are — I am — the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the “we” inside of me.

Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when? I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.

                           

                                             

                                               

I Will Fly and Fly

I will fly and fly _by Dr. APJ Abdulkalam Address and interaction with the Students and Teachers of Sat Paul Mittal School   I am delighted to address and interact with the students and teachers of Sat Paul Mittal School, Ludhiana. My greetings to all the members present here. I appreciate the vision of the founders and pioneers for providing quality education. Let me share with you some thoughts on I will fly and fly.

I will Fly and fly Let me present you an ancient version of a poem suitable to the young environment. I will fly "I am born with potential. I am born with goodness and trust. I am born with ideas and dreams. I am born with greatness. I am born with confidence. I am born with wings. So, I am not meant for crawling, I have wings, I will fly I will fly and fly" My message to you, young friends, is that education gives you wings to fly. Achievement comes out of fire in our sub-conscious mind that "I will win". So, each one of you assembled here and elsewhere, will have "Wings of Fire". The wings of fire will indeed lead to knowledge which will make you to fly as a doctor, or an engineer, or a scientist, or a teacher, or a political leader, or a bureaucrat or a diplomat or an astronaut or anything you want to be.

Knowledge and its dimensions Dear children, when you leave your schools, a great friend will be accompanying you. Who is that friend? That friend is - knowledge. Now, I am going to give the knowledge equation. Knowledge = Creativity + Righteousness + Courage Creativity "Learning gives creativity Creativity leads to thinking Thinking provides knowledge Knowledge makes you great" The next component of knowledge is righteousness. Righteousness is described in a divine hymn. Righteousness in the heart Where there is righteousness in the heart There is beauty in the character. When there is beauty in the character, there is harmony in the home. When there is harmony in the home. There is an order in the nation. When there is order in the nation, There is peace in the world. Now the question is: how do we inculcate the righteousness in the heart. In my opinion, there are three sources which can build a youth with righteousness in the heart. One is mother, second is father in a spiritual environment and the third and the most important is the teacher, particularly primary school teacher.

The third component is courage, which is defined as follows: Courage Courage to think different, Courage to invent, Courage to travel into an unexplored path, Courage to discover the impossible, Courage to combat the problems and succeed, are the unique qualities of the youth. As a youth of my nation, I will work and work with courage to achieve success in all the missions. Where from you will acquire knowledge? Home, good books, teachers and teaching environment, coming into contact with good human beings, teaching websites in the internet. When the schools teach the students to use the knowledge with creativity, righteousness and courage, nation will have a large number of empowered and enlightened citizens, which is vital for the growth of the individual, growth of the family, growth of nation and promotion of peace in the world.

Dear young friends, when you are completing your education from the Sat Paul Mittal School, you would have been blessed with knowledge with its three components and capacities to have great aim in life, that will make you to flying in life. Now I am going to give a few great examples who made a change, one with the determination to succeed in difficult circumstances, another with great heart for a beautiful green environment.

Dream transformed into thoughts and thoughts result into action A unique experience happened when I went to Madurai for inaugurating the Pediatric Oncology Cancer unit at Meenakshi Mission Hospital on 7th January 2011. After I completed the task, suddenly one person from the audience was approaching me and his face looked familiar. When he came closer, I found out that he was once my driver when I was the Director of Defence Research and Development Lab (DRDL) at Hyderabad during 1982-1992. His name is V. Kathiresan, who worked with me day and night for these ten years. During that time, I noticed, he was always reading some books, newspapers and journals during his waiting time in the car. That dedication attracted me. I asked him a question. What made you to read during your leisure time? He replied, that his children used to ask him lot of questions. That has made him to study and he tries to answer to his level best. The spirit of learning in him, attracted me, I told him to study formally through the distance education mode and gave him some free time to attend the course and complete his 10+2 and then to apply for higher education. He took that as a challenge and kept on studying and acquiring his skills and upgraded his educational qualification. He did B.A. (History), then he did M.A (History) and then he did M.A (Political Science) and completed his B.Ed and then M.Ed and he worked with me upto 1992. Then he registered for his doctoral studies and got his PhD in 2001. He joined the Education Department of Tamilnadu Government and served for a number of years. In 2010, he became an Assistant Professor in the Government Arts College at Mellur near Madurai. Later, a few months ago, I again met Prof Kathiresan sitting on the dais where I went to address the students of at UPMS School, Kovilpatti, Tamilnadu. There, I introduced Prof Kathiresan and brought out, how Prof Kathiresan, a native of Kovilpatti has transformed himself, earned a doctorate and teaching in a college after two decades of hard work. This incident cheered the entire young audience.

Birth of Creativity in a difficult situation Mario Capecchi had a difficult and challenging childhood. For nearly four years, Capecchi lived with his mother in a chalet in the Italian Alps. When World War II broke out, his mother, along with other Bohemians, was sent to Dachau as a political prisoner. Anticipating her arrest by the Gestapo, she had sold all her possessions and given the money to friends to help raise her son on their farm. In the farm, he had to grow wheat, harvest; take it to miller to be ground. The money which his mother left for him ran out. At the age of four and half years, he started living in the streets, sometimes joining gangs of other homeless children, sometimes living in orphanages and most of the time hungry. He spent the last year in the city of Reggio Emelia, hospitalized for malnutrition where his mother found him on his ninth birthday after a year of searching. Within weeks, the Capecchi and his mother sailed to United States of America to join his uncle and aunt.

He started his 3rd grade schooling afresh and started his education, interested in sports, studied political science. But he didn't find interesting and changed into science, became a mathematics graduate in 1961 with a double major in Physics and Chemistry. Although he liked Physics, its elegance and simplicity, he switched to molecular biology in graduate school, on the advice of James D Watson, who advised him that he should not be bothered about small things, since such pursuits are likely to produce only small answers. His objective was to do gene targeting. The experiments started in 1980 and by 1984, Capecchi had clear success. Three years later, he applied the technology to mice. In 1989, he developed the first mice with targeted mutations. The technology created by Doctor Capecchi allows researchers to create specific gene mutations anywhere they choose in the genetic code of a mouse. By manipulating gene sequences in this way, researchers are able to mimic human disease conditions on animal subjects. What the research of Mario Capecchi means for human health is nothing short of amazing, his work with mice could lead to cures for Alzheimer's disease or even Cancer. The innovations in genetics that Mario Capecchi achieved won him the Nobel Prize in 2007.

Nobel laureate Capecchi life indeed is an example for the youth to succeed by overcoming difficult problems. Capecchi's life reminds of a song from Pinocchio:- "When you wish upon a star, Makes no difference who you are Anything your heart desires Will come to you"

Teachers who love teaching Friends, I visualise a scene - a school having about 50 teachers and 750 students headed by a Principal. It is simply a place of beauty for creativity and learning. How is it possible? It is because the school management and the Principal selected the teachers who love teaching, who treat the students as their sons, grand-sons or daughters and grand-daughters. The children see the teacher, as a role model in teaching and how always they look pious through their daily way of life. Above all, I see an environment in which there is nothing like a good student, average student or poor student. The whole school and teacher system is involved in generating students who perform the best. And above all, what should be the traits the teacher should possess based on teachers? life both inside the class room and outside the school. Then, the students in the primary school and the secondary school observe and learn a unique experience. When good teachers walk, students should feel the radiation of knowledge and the purity life from their lives. This race of teachers should multiply.

Teacher as a facilitator of innovation Friends, teachers have to emerge as facilitator of new ideas and lead to lifelong innovative thinking in the young minds. This reminds me of a poem "The Student's Prayer" by a Chilean biologist Maturana. I will narrate a few lines from the poem. The Student's Prayer" Show me so that I can stand On your shoulders. Reveal yourself so that I can be Something different. Don't impose on me what you know, I want to explore the unknown And be the source of my own discoveries. Let the known be my liberation, not my slavery. I am sure, the teachers assembled here would be great facilitators of learning and innovation. Let me now focus on what is called dynamics of Smile.

Dynamics of Smile When we see a child, we see the innocent smile of the child. When we come across, the child in the Primary School, the smile is reduced, since the child has to carry a heavy school bag. When we see the child in their teens, their smile slowly fades away and the sign of concern appears. This is because of the anxiety about the future. When they complete their education, the topmost question in their mind is, what will I do after my education? Will I get an employment? Will I get a proper employment? Can the Principals and teachers see this dynamics of smiles of the child and preserve the smile in their faces when they complete their school education. The Student should be confident that "he can do it", he should have the self esteem and the capability to become an employment generator rather being an employment seeker. The management of education, leader of education have to facilitate such type of creative teacher in large numbers in primary school and then the secondary school. This transformation can only be brought about by a teacher who has a vision to transform, who has the ability to take risk against all challenges, who is a good listener, who is a good innovator, who maintains a cordial inter-personal or intrapersonal relationship and who has the ability to reach out to parents, community, media, and colleagues for accomplishing the vision of generating an enlightened citizen for the nation.

Conclusion Oath for the Students 1].  I will have a goal and work hard to achieve that goal. I realize that small aim is a crime. 2].  I will work with integrity and succeed with integrity. 3].  I will be a good member of my family, a good member of the society, a good member of the nation and a good member of the world. 4].  I will always try to save or better someone's life, without any discrimination of caste, creed, language religion or state. 5].  I will always protect and enhance the dignity of every human life without any bias. 6].  I will always remember the importance of time. My motto will be "Let not my winged days, be spent in vain". 7].  I will always work for clean home, clean planet Earth and clean energy. 8].  As a youth of my nation, I will work and work with courage to achieve success in all my tasks and enjoy the success of others. 9].  My National Flag flies in my heart and I will bring glory to my nation. My greetings and best wishes to all of you success in your educational mission. May God Bless you.