Graveyard Lessons

Graveyard lessons:

Last to last week we ended up at the Museum of the San Ramon Valley first in the morning at ten but a week earlier for a field trip . I had messed up with the dates. At first I was very disappointed, having driven all the way ! Wasn't sure what to do? We had lots of time till soccer later that day.

But the docent at the museum was very kind enough to spend time with me and show me all the activities we could engage in. So she handed us a passport book that we could use to enhance our learning. She pointed to many places in the neighborhood that we could visit and we took off. We had a good 3-4 hours in our hands before we had to head south for soccer. 

We went looking for the plaque that commemorates the first visit of the Spanish to what is present day Danville. Instead we ended up at the local historical cemetery! And guess what? We decided it give it a look. Being a HSEr mom for all these years I have started looking upon everything as a learning opportunity. I can only see what is there to learn? Nothing is a waste of time, nothing is out of topic. 

Shruthkirti was especially excited to do the passport book. It had a section where the exercise was to locate certain graves of pioneers and note down their birth and death dates. Seriously I would never imagined doing something like this EVER! Visiting andd studying a graveyard. As soon as we started the visit , questions started to pour.  I love those moments of extreme curiosity . It's like a volcano , pouring out all sorts of questions. Like a hot Tava, just ready to make dosas. Anything you say or do at that moment is absorbed like a sponge. 

We had discussions covering questions like what is death, is death a bad thing? How does our Vedic culture view death?, how is it different from the western viewpoint, incarnation,  the purpose of life, cremation vs burial etc...so many topics that I would have otherwise never thought of talking about for that day were touched upon..that's the beauty of being open to learning all day through, of learning through living.