by Mike Nitzel, Principal
Thomas Jefferson Elementary School
Rock Island-Milan (IL) School District 41
Milan, IL
“Character
is what we do when we think no one is looking.”—H. Jackson Browne, Jr.
Last week I went to my church’s Maundy
Thursday service. During the service, one
of our pastors, Amanda Weinkauf, preached a sermon about love, certainly an appropriate
subject for a Holy Week service and not an altogether surprising one. Of course during her sermon there were the
requisite Bible passages and psalms, certainly inspiring and moving but nothing
unfamiliar or particularly surprising. What really grabbed my attention was a
story nestled in the middle of her sermon.
The purpose of the story was to illustrate the power of God’s love and
what it truly means to love another unconditionally, the way that God loves
each one of us. It was a story about a
little girl in Afghanistan, an American soldier serving there and a piece of
fruit. However, as I ruminated on the
story, I came to the conclusion that the story was as much about character as
it was about love. I’m a big fan of
character education and I realized that the story would be a good one to share
as an example of not only love but of character. I’m going to do my best to recreate the story
for you here. I can’t promise that it’s
a verbatim retelling of the story, but its essence is there. Read on…
It seems that there was an American
soldier serving in Afghanistan whose job it was along with the rest of his unit
to provide food and water to the local people in one of the villages in their
area of operation. One day, this soldier
was finishing up handing out the food and, as usual, the food was gone before everyone
received a parcel. This soldier and
others in his unit promised to return the next day with more supplies, when suddenly
his attention was drawn to a little girl who was standing alone off to the side
of the road. She had received no parcel
and the soldier knew that she would receive no food until the next day at the
earliest. Clearly she was hungry,
perhaps starving; there was no other reason for her to be there. The soldier felt badly that he couldn’t help
her; he felt badly that he hadn’t given this little girl a parcel when he had
handed some out to adults. He simply
hadn’t seen her, standing alone, somewhat in the distance. And now the food and water were gone. At that
moment he remembered that he had put a banana in his rucksack should he need a
snack at some point during the day.
Deciding that the little girl needed the banana more than he did, he
walked up to the little girl, reached into his rucksack, and handed her the
banana. The little girl took the banana,
gently and carefully peeled it, and then turned and walked away. As the soldier watched, this little girl
walked up to two boys, younger than she, both lying under a tree; they were apparently
too weak to move. The soldier hadn’t
noticed the boys before, in the same way that he hadn’t noticed the little
girl. He watched as this hungry little
girl took the peeled banana, broke it in half, and gave each of the little boys
one half of the banana. The little girl
then proceeded to eat the peel.
The soldier standing by the side of the
road witnessed this. And wept.
This little girl gave freely. She gave, without expecting anything in
return. She gave away the most important
possession she had at that moment in her life. There’s much I don’t know about
this story. I don’t know if the little
girl knew the little boys. I don’t know
if they were friends or enemies. What I do know is that a hungry little girl
gave two hungrier little boys the only food she had and received nothing in
return and expected nothing in return. What
I do know is that she shared more than a banana with those two boys that
day. She shared her love with them. Unconditional and unfettered of expectations
of something given in return, she gave them love. And in so doing, she
demonstrated a remarkable character.
“Character
is what we do when we think no one is looking.”
When discussing character with your
students, perhaps this is a story that you could share and have a discussion
with them. I think they would relish a
conversation around these questions--What would they do faced with the same
situation? Would they eat the banana? Would they share the banana? What do
their answers say about their character?
What would you do?
As always, your comments and feedback
are most appreciated. And as always,
thank you for taking time out of your busy lives to read this. I really appreciate it!
