This was the third or fourth lesson in the subject Society and Nature. The combination of nature and society itself looked funny. Nature is something that lives its own life, not always dependent on humans. And society is something that is directly related to the will, thoughts and actions of a person.
“Society begins with each of us,” the teacher said. "Each of us has a name, age and special qualities. For example, hair and eye colour are special qualities that distinguish one person from another.
Each of us likes to do something special, it could be painting, music, singing, dancing, building Lego models and much more. Our special qualities are called personality traits. Personal qualities can be constant, but they can also change slowly or quickly. For example, the colour of our eyes usually does not change throughout life, perhaps just a little. Some mothers notice and say that their child's eye colour was bright blue when the child was a baby. And then the eye colour became more of a greyish colour, although still blue, but even got flecks of light brown that weren't there before. It happens. However, we see, in general, that a person's eyes are blue throughout his or her life.
On the other hand, our height changes quickly, especially when we are children. Boys and girls rejoice when they find out that they have become taller by as much as 10 centimetres, although it has only been one or one and half year. We grow faster when we have fewer years. But when we have more years of age, we grow more slowly. Okay, what about our ability to do things? Well, a lot can be said. For example, a girl loves to draw, and a few years later she loves to sew clothes for her dolls. Then she likes to sew clothes for herself. And then she may even like to sew clothes for her friends, also she may call herself a clothing designer.
A boy may enjoy building something out of Lego, and then he turns out to be good at drawing different shapes, and then he may want to make a robot with his own hands and call himself an engineer. We see this in life. What can we say from this? We have something constant within us that makes us happy, which can be called a personal special quality or talent. But talent can be demonstrated in different ways. What does it mean? Talent is something in our nature. And the way we use it brings us closer to other people, because we do for them what makes us happy and them too. And from this comes a community or a society."
“If we love someone, then we do good things for them, and this feeling of love in action is probably called talent,” thought Apollinaria. If I need to build a house for my doll, a boy who plays Lego can probably do it. I just have to figure out how I can ask him to build me a Lego house for my doll.”
Arriving home, Apollinaria saw a story in a magazine about how one mother made a doll for her daughter, and then this doll was named Barbie. And then many boys and girls, playing with Barbie and each other, became designers of furniture, houses and cars. And they even continued to make houses, tables, chairs and clothes for other people, although they were not like Barbie, but still Barbie was a little like these people. “Beauty, joy and creativity are what unite all people, even if there are some differences,” Apollinaria thought. “Society needs the talents of all the people who live in it. Okay, then who am I and what am I going to do.. to make.. to create?"