At a recent conference, Betty Todd Smith, a wonderful conference presenter said, “Children never tire of repetition. It is we adults who hate the monotony of repetition.” That sentence really struck a chord with me as a piano teacher. I am also trying to think of ways to make the repetition more interesting to the student, but perhaps I am the one that gets bored.
A few days later, my husband reminded me of this beautiful and even more life-altering quote about repetition given by G. K. Chesterton:
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity to make all daisies appear alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never grown tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite for infancy: for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
I think my perspective cannot help but be different tomorrow.
(Photo by seemsartless.com)
Wendy, thank you for the reminder! I’m sure it is true that it is me, as a teacher that tires of things quicker…especially when I may do the same activity with several students in a week! I appreciate the thought for today!
That is a wonderful quote- one that I may have to post in my kitchen so I can be reminded! Thanks for sharing.
I love this quote! Thank you for sharing!
This is one of my favourite quotes. I try to live with the eternal optimism of Chesterton. Instead of asking why something is going wrong, he would always ask, why is so much going well? It IS a life-altering perspective.
That really struck a chord with me, too, when Betty made that remark. I love that Chesterton quote! Thanks for sharing it!
Wow! What a beautiful quote! I know a grandmother who didn’t like reading the same story over and over to her grandchildren. But the grandchildren taught HER, through their insistence and their love of the repetition of great stories!
I hadn’t had a “Review List” page in my students’ notebooks for a few years. When I revived the idea last year, the students taught ME the value of loving to play the things they just love to play! 😉
There’s a great old song by Rich Mullins called “Growing Young”. It contains the lyric “we are children no more, we have sinned and grown old”. I never realized this was inspires by Chesterton. Thanks for sharing it 🙂
I love to hear your thoughts, Travis! Thanks for posting this.
In pondering this lovely quote I’m thinking about the need for a balance between repetition AND contrast in the formation of good music —– the sun does come up every morning – that’s the repetition – but sometimes might be clouded over or the earth might be further away – perhaps allowing for contrast. Maybe children just so much love the fact that it comes up every day —- that the rest is incidental :))