If you are thinking a year ahead, sow a seed, If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree. Kuan Tzu Chinese Poet, c. 500 B.C
If you are thinking one hundred years ahead, educate the people. 
...but, sometimes in the scope of a day, it seems so much more than that...and there needs to be attention to seeds and trees as well.
After several very busy and intense weeks, I finally have a morning to kind of recover my brain and see where I am...
One of my students, who was born in this country, but whose parents are from Hong Kong, recently shared with me some of the beauty of the many interesting Chinese symbols. Apparently there are more than 80,000 of these symbols, each holding its own unique meaning.
While looking for the symbol for "Love" (she is in middle school, you know!), she showed me how there could be over 118 symbols that depict love - each made depending on exactly what type of "love" that the writer means to show.
"mother's love," "undying love," "first love," "endless love," "marriage," "child's love", and on and on!
These symbols depict "true love" 
...
apparently the left character translates into "true" and the one on the right is a type of love but only looks like that symbol when it means "true love."
I watched as she copied the symbols from the Internet, then put an individual symbol onto the face of a greeting card. Not exactly the beauty of ancient script handwriting, but in her own way, teaching the rest of us and continuing the flow of a piece of her culture.
Actually, I would love to receive a card like those she created.
Very simple, yet beautiful in their own way.
If you are thinking a year ahead, sow a seed,
("seed")
If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree
("tree")
If you are thinking one hundred years ahead, educate the people.
Kuan Tzu Chinese Poet, c. 500 B.C.
("education")
Words to ponder...
Symbols to appreciate...
Something to learn more about.
Not fully cohesive thoughts...but a morning ramble!
Hey: Good words yourself! Stuff like this does not happen at Fenn.
Posted by: Fitz | April 15, 2007 at 01:27 PM
I admire the graphic aspect of the Oriental languages. Marg took an interest in Japanese while in her teens. Took it in H.S. only to later learn that her WWII Vet teacher was behind the times. We housed several students from Japan during those yrs and she also got summer work escorting them around our town. Later she went on to University one summer for intensive study. When finished she toured Japan for 9 wks and became fairly fluent. Having those young people in our home, we often sat around our round coffee table exchanging drawings of explanation about our 2 languages. Swear words were popular and one long evening discussion was about the word "bullshit"--not easy to explain!
Posted by: Karen | May 13, 2007 at 12:09 AM