Our healthy and handicapped children
Perhaps one of the most important tasks of art is not only to give pleasure, but to sympathize, to help. An object or a doll, especially to a child, is familiar and understandable. The true puppeteers are children, those who are able to converse directly with inanimate objects. Their games are always in dialogue form, not monologue, they ask their own questions and search for the answers to the most complex questions. All of this takes place in the form of a game, through an object, through a doll.
This is the most familiar language to a child. If adults could use this gift correctly and intelligently, an entire realm of opportunity would open in teaching children proper and dignified human behavior, giving attention to true eternal values. There would be an opportunity to point out bad and harmful habits without moralization, and to suggest how to avoid them. It would be a way to assist children in making their way into the adult world by teaching them the rules of life so that they could be happy and useful in society.
Handicapped children
It is with good reason that simple wisdom says – you can recognize a person in misfortune. Most likely one of the greatest misfortunes is a child without good health in the family. It is a heavy cross to bear for the mother and the entire family. The easiest would be to give the child away and forget. But most choose to bear the cross that fate has given them and give everything of themselves.
Many times I have participated in festivals, both in my own country and abroad, where handicapped people, supported by those more fortunate, express their capabilities in the sphere of art. These people have limitless talent. When other opportunities are limited, often artistic expression is accented, since values of daily life are viewed differently.
It is up to us to support this initiative, since often children or adults, pressured by their misfortune or fate, simply need a good word or some assistance. We should help give them maybe the last, however short opportunity to forget, be happy and feel equal, and perhaps an object or a doll would help them do something that they can no longer do by themselves. It might help them fulfill that dream that could never come true and give pleasure, no matter how short.
This summer I was able to visit the children's cancer ward of Anderson's Hospital in Houston, Texas
The dedicated parents, knowing that their children only have months to live, do not leave their children's sides and try to give all their time and spiritual warmth. These are hours of suffering, a battle with incurable disease, and precious moments with a loving child.
I only felt one thing - that we cannot leave such children and their families alone in their misfortune.
We can't simply weep and sympathize, we must not allow them to be alone with their heavy thoughts,
It allowed them to forget, relax, smile. And when the children smiled, it was the greatest gift to the parents beside them.
Our task was successful.
After so many years of working with children, I have never come across a more grateful audience than these, terminally ill children and their parents.
This page last was updated on 01/06/00.