"YOU GOTTA HAVE HEART"
by Janet Shepard, Director
February is Heart Month sponsored by the American Heart Association to promote cardio vascular health for men, women and children. February is the fitting time to promote healthy hearts since we also celebrate Valentine’s Day during the month. With the abundance of hearts maybe it is also the time to talk about emotionally healthy hearts, supporting one another in tough times and caring for those who cannot care for themselves, our children.
Perhaps some of the most distressing signs of the times are the constant name calling and blaming and other acts of aggression which seem so prevalent in national and state news, in casual conversation, on social networking sites, and even at sporting events. Dr Jim Knight from the Kansas University Research Center on Learning wrote about this in a recent blog that provides good food for thought about what we have become as a society and the implications for our children.
These are frustrating times with too few jobs, services, resources and funding. No one knows this better than PPP as we face the potential loss of our only remaining major funding source. Yet, we have not given up. We could relate with our president in the state of the union address when he said “We will not quit!” So what takes the place of money and other resources? Passion, ingenuity, prioritizing and heart all go a long way.
The title for this article is also the title of a couple of songs. One song from the 1950’s Broadway musical Damn Yankees suggests that having heart can make up for lack of skill. The other a much more recent song speaks to overcoming adversity in life by having heart. How do we help children have heart? How do we teach them caring?
Most importantly perhaps we teach them about heart by caring for them, making them our national and state priority. We teach them by helping them reach out to help others. We teach them by encouraging them and their families to volunteer in their communities, in their places of worship. We teach them by respecting them, by seeing that they have enough to eat, a home, caring adults, and the best education we can provide. We teach them by showing that we have “miles and miles and miles of heart” for them for once we make the world right for children, it will be right for the rest of us, too.
