The art of giving, indeed. That’s how our homes are made, our communities built. That’s how we make our nation.

Sadly, however, we are fast losing this important human value – the art of giving. Development is good, but that’s robbing us of our good nature – human nature. For indeed, development is a word that is so heartlessly misused in this day and age. We have forgotten that the word should actually mean evolution with refinement.

All is not lost, even so. And that’s a comfort. Some good things are with us still. How we carry on with the goodness left with us still will shape what we will be. Future is what we make as we live just as our past shaped our present. Human actions have that incredible power – to make and to unmake.

Small things are beautiful. Often, in the smallness of things dwell greatness. But our illusion keeps us from understanding the beauty of it all. The bigger the better, and grander, we think, helplessly. So has the world changed that we no longer know how in the darkest labyrinth we walk to trade our souls for much less its value.

A school in Thimphu – Jigme Losel Primary School – showed us yesterday what we, as responsible members of society, could do to help each other. At a time when our small society is fast losing the vital elements that kept us together for so long, this comes as a sobering reminder.

The school donated more than 340 blankets, 1,400 hand-washing soaps. It also gave out hand-knitted mittens, socks, and hats for newborn, to the health ministry. There is no appropriate word to describe this kindness and concern from a small school. Imagine the small hands of primary students who made the mittens!

And look at the larger picture, the very core of the dream. Our schools are poor like many schools around the world. But it is the head behind the idea that makes a school like Jigme Losel rich and worthy of our commendation.

Taking, and only taking, makes a nation poor. As citizens, we have the most solemn responsibility to give, to help government achieve greater dream for the comfort of the posterity.

Jigme Losel’s initiative is an example of how pulled together hearts can pulsate for the life of the nation. Teachers, parents and students worked to help nation reach for the poor. And what a beautiful initiative indeed that they did this to celebrate the birth of The Gyalsey, our future!

Here is a lesson. And we must take it to the heart. By giving we share, make and build. We thank Jigme Losel for giving us this urgent lesson.

Let’s all do whatever in our capacity to build this great nation of ours. There are those who are in desperate need. Let’s open our hearts and give.

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