The Mystery Child

Abe V Rotor

In a workshop for adult leaders, the instructor asked the participants to draw on the blackboard a beautiful house, a dream house ideal to live in and raise a family. It was of course, an exercise, which in the minds of the participants was as easy as copying a model from experience and memory. Besides it is a universal dream to own such a house, and its concept allows free interplay of both reason and imagination.

The participants formed a queue to allow everyone to contribute his own idea on the blackboard The first person in the queue drew the posts of the house, on which the succeeding members made the roof and floor. The rest proceeded in making the walls and windows.

On the second round the participants added garage, porch, veranda, staircase, gate, fence, swimming pool, TV antennae, and other amenities. Finally their dream house was completed and they returned to their seats.

A lively “sharing session” followed and everyone was happy with the outcome of the exercise, including the teacher.

Just then a child happened to be passing by and saw the drawing of the house on the blackboard. He stopped and entered the classroom. He stood there for a long time looking at the drawing and the teacher approached him and asked what he thought about the drawing. The child said in a mild and soft way,

“But there are no neighbors!”

In the same village there was a similar workshop exercise, but this time the participants were to draw a community. The participants made a queue on the blackboard and after an hour of working together, came up with a beautiful drawing of a community.

There were houses and at the community center were a chapel, school, market, village hall, plaza. Roads and bridges make a network in the village showing people doing their chores. Everything that makes a typical village is in the drawing.
The participants discussed, “What constitute a community,” and everyone was so delighted.

Just then a child was passing by, and when he saw the drawing on the backboard, stopped and entered the classroom. The teacher approached him and asked what he thought about the drawing. The child said in a mild and soft way,

“But there are no trees, no birds;
there are no mountains, fields, river!”

Some days passed since the two workshops. No one seriously bothered to find out who the child was or where he lived. Then the whole village began to search for the child, but they never found him – not in the village, not in the town, not in the capital, and not in any known place.

Who was the child? Everyone who saw him never forgot his kind, beautiful and innocent face. The workshop participants and the whole village pondered on his words which remained a puzzle to them for a long time.

They pondered on the words of this mystery child which became the greatest lessons in ecology:

But there are no neighbors.
But there are no trees, no birds; there are no mountains, no fields, no river.”

Home, Sweet Home with Nature, AVR