Our Planet

Text : Ayumi Ohno

A-chan started to build up the Kaplas. Very carefully, she piled up higher and higher. “Wow! Wow! So amazing!”, K-chan jumped cheerfully next to her. A-chan kept going. “Is it bigger than me?”, she stood next to the creation. “A bit more”, she reached for higher. Now everyone was paying attention to the Kapla tower. When the tower became higher than her height, S-chan said “it’s almost as tall as A-san”. Everyone was looking at the scene wondering how tall she will be piling up the Kaplas. A-chan looked at the tower from a distance for a minute, and one by one, she started to put back the kaplas back into the box. “A-chan why are you destroying it?”, asked K-chan. A-chan thought for a minute, and replied back quietly, “I don’t want it to be destroyed by other people”.

 

Behind the happiness of having the towers built so high, there seemed to be a very delicate feeling of not wanting to feel the sadness of having your creation destroyed by other people. On the other hand, it felt to me that she was scared of the challenges of keeping going even with the possibility of breaking it and I was not able to communicate to A-chan the fun and the charm of going beyond the fear. Everyday, I ask the children “let’s see what happens next!”, or “what should we do after this?”. However, it is because these children do not care about the results, they are able to challenge themselves without the fear of failing. This made me question whether I should provoke children to think about what happens after the present moment.