Once upon a time, there was a boy who could not feel happiness when other people were joyful. He always responded with a minimizing commentary or disapproving face. He saw others smiling, chatting, playing and appreciating a warm cup of tea and a free biscuit on a table but he could not reciprocate. with a smile. His eyes were always stern, lip corners dropped, body posture irritated. ‘How can they be so happy?’ he was wondering all the time. ‘How can they be so happy when so little is done?’
He was very puzzled but fortunately quite capable of self-reflection too.
‘Am I envious of joy?’ He thought to himself appealing to his inner wisdom but could not satisfy himself with an honest answer.
Tired from his own thoughts and worries, he went to a nearby park where an elderly lady was sitting on a bench feeding birds with seeds. She was smiling and talking to the birds. She was happy. The boy got irritated again. ‘How can she be happy just like that? Feeding birds?’ And then he got curious as he recognized the feeling. ‘Miss, could I feed the birds with you?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’ She answered passing him a bag of seeds. He started smiling but then as soon as he felt his own smile he got irritated with himself for smiling.
‘Miss, why am I angry with myself for smiling.’
‘I think it is something to do with your inner mirrors. It is because of your adult inner mirrors.’
‘Are they broken?’
‘Did you notice?’
Story and photography: Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini, 2025. Copying without the explicit permission from the author is not permitted.
How was your day? What you’ve been up to lately? I so rarely hear from you but you often hear from me. It would nice to hear from you. Who you are? Where you living now? What has awakened your heart recently? I am sending you a few photographs of our fairytale wonderland yard. They are still performing well against the darkness of the world. Making neighbours smile or wonder why they are still there. Wouldn’t it be lovely to get all our front yards’ decorations and place them all in our local park to make a magical fairytale land out of this world? Can you imagine children’s faces and all the wows exhaled with joys of laughter and fingers pointed: ‘Look at this!’ ‘Look at that?’ Maybe neighbours and local community centres would be up for it?
Sash Milne from Inked in Colour believed in the power of human connection and community. She planted a strong seed. Thank you for making the difference through your voice and writing, Sash. We can be resilient independently and we can be even more resilient together. Yes, we can.
And I was also thinking…
Sometimes magic is not readily available to everyone. Sometimes children cannot walk through the city or even ride through the city for various reasons. Sometimes it is because they have to stay at the hospital. And I think that they need magic too, so on the 24 December, trying to observe Polish tradition of having one more place at the table for a stranger I thought that no stranger would come really (they hardly ever come), but I thought to myself that I can be a stranger who makes someone feel better. And I think you can too. If you would like to.. so I wonder if you would like to manifest some hope and joy.. I have something in confidence to share or rather a recipe for joy to share. Good deeds are embarrassing to share but then The Gita for Children taught me this year that goodness leads to intelligence and it leads to knowledge. So perhaps you would like to do it too?
I bought these lovely aurora LED lights (click here to see) and I grabbed my second-hand copy of the book 100 Reasons to Hope. True stories of everyday heros(here) and I took them to our local hospital for the children on the inpatient ward to enjoy together with the nurses, doctors and other members of staff that were working during Christmas. The children’s team play coordinator was so moved. I felt I did the right thing and I’m feeling I am doing the right thing now too to share it with you. Maybe you would like to do the same for the children at your local hospital? Or others. Talk to your family and friends about it. Maybe they would like to do it together.
We have these lights at home too and we use them with my children of they are overly anxious or struggle to come down before going to sleep.
A bit of magic is so necessary when reality is too much to handle. Isn’t it?
We are all at home today doing jigsaw puzzles, listening to this relaxing music for children and experiencing some magic on the screen. It gives the room a warming atmosphere and it gives a festive touch to the living room bringing the fairy tale land inside the house.
‘Look mum, what I’ve done?’ our 5 year old said feeling a bit better today albeit still quite feverish. She took clear tape and wrapped it around a piece of card. ‘Look mum, I have a wiping board now.’ We practise writing and drawing on it and it was brilliant. Yesterday, she took a hoop and danced with it around the room to piano music, fluey but determined that ‘bed rotting’ is not what she would succumb to. Have you heard about it? In essence, it involves idling around in bed with food around watching videos, flicking through the phone or watching TV series and it is an increasingly common form of rest. Not necessarily the most helpful to our nervous systems long-term but it’s easy to understand the allure of it. (You can read about it here. The article is in Polish but Google can translate it for you.) The term itself, however, seems to me like a good blocker to excessive indolence. I hope our 12 year-old will embrace it in his lingo.
There is a pink silicone pig walking on our floor right now.
‘What do you like most?’ I asked my 5 year old.
‘Mum and pizza’.
‘And if you had to give up Mum or pizza, what would you give up?’
‘Play. I would give up play.’
Children are smart. Their instincts rule. They rely on their parents for survival and they rely on food for survival and when faced with a dilemma, they will most likely give up what brings them joy. And I guess that is why there is a pink silicone pig walking on our floor right now.
It’s funny. It’s loud and it has the biggest and the most loving eyes, I’ve ever seen. It makes us laugh a lot by being a keynote speaker at the dining table designed to revitalize our instinctual goofiness. We become as silly as it is by imitating, of course. You just cannot help it, can you? The pig honks, you honk. And so it goes.
What made you laugh this Christmas?
I wouldn’t have got the pig years ago when I was doing the Nothing New project or years later, but now I give in, perhaps too often, in order to remain sane and find internal balance between different societal requirements, personal values and competing ideologies that surround our thinking. I justify the not-so-environmental purchasing choices by ‘wanting to get to know my daughter’ but perhaps it is not the best justification or rationalization to have. Surely, there are hundreds of other ways to get to know her. But maybe it is also the way?
Have you ever watched The Fiddler on the Roof? The main character, Tevye the Dairyman is often torn between choices and decisions to make, mostly whether to allow each of his daughters to marry who they want or not. His internal dialogues are characterised by the phrase ‘but then on the other hand…’ He keeps on weighing the pros and cons of every choice and decision giving in either to the pressures of the outside world or his own feelings about the situation. He calculates. The rights, the wrongs, the benefits and potential losses. Don’t we feel similar today with all the array of choices that we have to make about our ways forward in life and our children’s wellbeing. We want to make a difference in their lives and for their futures and then we are like Tevye… ‘But then on the other hand…’
But then… the reminders or signposting of what is right for them come from our own children.
‘What should I do with my wedding shoes?’ ‘Should we give them away?’
‘Mum, could you keep it for me and then my daughter can have them after me. This would be nice.’
Children don’t always want to discard what we have. They don’t always want to have new things. They often appreciate things and what they appreciate they want to last.
“You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things
Postcards Without Stamps 