Be a force of love as often as you can.
– Wayne Dyer

In their popular book, The Complementary Curriculum Approach, Lisa Porter Kuh and Iris Chin Ponte write about the power of intention, which, for educators, they call “a purposeful aim, plan or provocation that guides teachers’ productive action in the classroom.”

Pam Boulton contributed the following reading from the website, “The Daily Good,” along with her own commentary at the end, that encourages us to hold an over-arching intention of contributing positively to the world in whatever way we are able:

“Picking Up Leaves”

“Charles P. Gibbs, having visited Hiroshima and attended conferences about the threat of nuclear war, felt depressed and powerless by the ‘human capacity to instantly destroy 80,000 lives,’ and other unimaginable horrors. When he arrived home from a conference, he watched his toddler shuffle through a huge pile of leaves, and pick up one leaf and place it in a garbage can — leaf after leaf, one at a time. He thought of how futile and even foolish it was, comparing it to his felt powerlessness and sense of overwhelm. Upon reflection, however, his son inspired the realization that amid the sea of dead leaves representing “the shadow side of human life on this planet – leaves of violence, oppression, greed, poverty, injustice, inequality, environmental degradation, and on and on – we can be attentive to a particular leaf calling to us. We can pick up that leaf, take care of it, and then look for the next leaf calling our name.”

Be The Change

What is one thing you can influence during your day – one leaf you can pick up? As Charles said, “Whether we work in the grassroots or make high-level policy… or devote our time to creating a healthy home for others and ourselves, each of us can answer the call to pick up one leaf.”