Alone or together!

As I walk in the garden when the pruned rose plants have started to bear their blossoms, I noticed that most of the flowers are in bunches of two or three. There are only a few with a solitary bud in a stem. 

It captured my attention to travel back to recall how in togetherness with others one has better prospects of being altruistic. 

The department where I work would enter into its tenth year shortly. I remembered all the significant events of the nine years of the department. The idea of a child development department in a medical college was rather strange in this part, as such departments did not exist in most of the medical colleges in India. 

I remember how the hospital authorities had to trust me fully while designing and altering spaces to locate the department. Every person whom I met to create the physical space wondered why we had some specifications. We needed vinyl flooring for some rooms, diffuse lighting in the rooms, activity boards on the walls, etc where children would spend time.... As we went through the process of getting ready the facilities, I recall the comments of a carpenter, ' we all worked together to get a place ready for welcoming children'.This carpenter till he retired from the hospital was the one who would drop in now ans then to enquire about all of us in the department. For him, seeing us to do well in what we were doing, was an encouragement. At his retirement when I met to greet and thank him, he said,'I remember how all of us worked together to create this facility for children' !

We are called to be together with others. Even recently, as the Bud to Blossom, a booklet to help parents to observe the developmental process of children, was published, I witnessed the joy of working together and its fruits in the way the booklet appear elegant to look at and rich in content. Shalini compiled the information and drafted it. Anna edited and formatted it to get it ready for printing. This might merge as a valuable companion to parents in observing different domains of children's development form birth to five years. 

I wonder whether the call of  working together and trusting to collaborate would become more  common than what it is now in many work places.

We are workers and co-workers and not loners!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)