The More We Get Together

“The more we get together, together, together...

The more we get together, the happier we’ll be.

Because your friends are my friends, and my friends are your friends. 

The more we get together, the happier we’ll be.”

In the Preschool Class, we sing this song almost every day at one of our three meal times.  And it sounds so simple- “The more we get together, the happier we’ll be.”  But, in the beginning, it often doesn’t feel that way….

It’s Monday morning, and we’re out in the yard.  The children have been working on their “Ninja House” much of the morning, but as we come back outside after snack, their attention turns to the newly-fallen leaves lying under our large maple tree.  CKP finds a leaf with a brilliant spectrum of colors (maroon, orange, and yellow) and says, “Look at my beautiful leaf!”  OP has turned her attention to the same leaf and after Clark puts it down, she immediately picks it up.  CKP notices this, and says, “No, I’m still working with that.”  “No, I’m working with it,” OP replies. 

By this time, I have come over to assess what is happening.  I ask them to hand me the leaf while we talk about how to solve the problem.  “It looks like you both want the same leaf.  How could we solve that problem?”  Hearing this, CKP quickly finds another leaf with its own array of colors and offers it as a substitution to OP.  “So CKP’s idea is that you could have the leaves he’s found and he could have the leaf that I’m holding in my hand.  How does that sound?”  “Not good!”  

Meanwhile, JA hears this same conversation and offers OP a leaf saying, “Here’s a leaf for you!”  “But that one isn’t beautiful!  I want my leaf,” OP responds.  However, as I continue to hold the leaf and CKP again asks to be entrusted with it, OP has her own idea.  I see her bounding up the side porch steps, only to celebrate and proclaim the long piece of grass she has found.  “It looks like you’ve found something else to play with, OP.  Does that mean CKP can have this leaf?”  “Yes!”, she replies.  

Tuesday will host one of the most important elections in our Nation’s history, and it has been met with not a little strife already.  Rather, it has been a continuous and contentious debate over the past four years, while ideas conflict over the appropriate and democratic way to move forward.  And though this discord has been sewn into the fabric of who we are together, I wonder about how, and even if, we will move forward together as a collection of diverse people, situated in the same geographical and constitutional milieu(s).  

“The more we get together, together, together…” The more our preschool class gets together, the more we see our differences: differences of culture, of thought, of feeling.  And the more we get together, the more we see these differences and recognize them as such.  Initially, we try to change one another, to root out these differences that we see as problematic.  But eventually, the more we get together, the more conflicts we have, the more we see our differences as something to be empathized with (rather than destroyed), and the more we see ourselves in one another.  A conflict over a leaf is just one example of this.  

With all of this being said, a leaf is not abortion or LGBTQ rights or immigration, and it never will be.  But the possession of a leaf is political.   Everything is.  And the more we get together as a community, the more we will learn how to navigate conflict together, empathize with one another’s differences, and just maybe... the happier we will be.