My Son Bertie's Memory Work at the Age of 5

As a father to my son, I thought it is my responsibility to play a role in the education of my son in school. Here are some of the poems, songs, and great quotations that Bertie memorized as we walked together daily to his Kumon Math Sacred Heart school in Lorenzo Village and walking back home after school for lunch:--- Why is it that everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die?--- Life is a sexually-transmitted disease with a mortality rate of 100 per cent.--- Why bother to be born again, when you can just grow up?--- "If you tell a child that God made the world," he will usually ask: "then who made God?" If we reply, as the catechism states, "no one made God. He always was! Then why couldn't we just say about the world in the first place?"--- "They came with the bible, and their religion, stole our land, crushed our spirit, and now tell us we should be thankful to the Lord for being saved." Pontiac--- One bright day in the middle of the night, Two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other. A deaf policeman heard the noise and came to kill the two dead boys. --- When we are born we cry, that we are come to this great stage of fools.---Shakespeare To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. - Shakespeare --- The trouble with the rat race, even if you win, you are still a rat.--- I would like the Filipinos to be brilliant, enlightened, intelligent, ad progressive. - Jose Rizal--- SMILE Smile though your heart is aching Smile even though it's breaking When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by If you smile through your fear and sorrow Smile and maybe tomorrow You'll see the sun come shining through for you Light up your face with gladness Hide every trace of sadness Although a tear may be ever so near That's the time you must keep on trying Smile, what's the use of crying? You'll find that life is still worthwhile If you just smile That's the time you must keep on trying Smile, what's the use of crying? You'll find that life is still worthwhile If you just smile. (written by Charlie Chaplin)--- "What A Difference A Day Makes" What a difference a day makes Twenty-four little hours Brought the sun and the flowers Where there used to be rain My yesterday was blue, dear Today I'm a part of you, dear My lonely nights are through, dear Since you said you were mine What a difference a day makes There's a rainbow before me Skies above can't be stormy Since that moment of bliss, that thrilling kiss It's heaven when you find romance on your menu What a difference a day made And the difference is you What a difference a day makes There's a rainbow before me Skies above can't be stormy Since that moment of bliss, that thrilling kiss It's heaven when you find romance on your menu What a difference a day made And the difference is you --- I'll BE SEEING YOU I'll be seeing you In all the old familiar places That this heart of mine embraces All day through In the small cafe, the park across the way The children's carousel The chestnut trees, the wishing well And I'll be seeing you In every lovely, summer's day And everything that's light and gay I'll always think of you that way I'll find you in the morning sun And when the night is new I'll be looking at the moon But I'll be seeing you I will find you in the morning sun And when the night is new I'll be looking at the moon But I'll be seeing you.--- Bertrand Russell Introductory Remarks of his Autobiography Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness – that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what – at last – I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.--- ON THE USES OF PHILOSOPHY "There is a pleasure in philosophy and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain. Most of us have known some golden days in the June of life when philosophy was in fact what Plato calls it, "that dear delight;" when the love of a modestly elusive truth seemed more glorious – incomparably -- than the lust for the ways of the flesh and the dross of the world. And there is always some wistful remnant in us of that early wooing of wisdom. "Life has meaning," we feel with Browning. "To find its meaning is my meat and drink." So much of our lives is meaningless, a self-canceling vacillation and futility. We strive with the chaos about and within, but we should believe all the while that there is something vital and significant in us, could we but decipher our own souls. We want to understand. "Life means for us constantly to transform into light and flame all that we are or meet with!" We are like Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov -- "one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions." We want to seize the value and perspective of passing things and so to pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance. We want to know that the little things are little, and the things big, before it is too late. We want to see things now as they will seem forever -- "in the light of eternity." We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death. We want to be whole, to coordinate our energies by harmonizing our desires, for coordinated energy is the last word in ethics and politics -- and perhaps in logic and metaphysics, too. "To be a philosopher," said Thoreau, "is not merely to have subtle thoughts, or even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust." We may be sure that if we can but find wisdom, all things else will be added unto us. "Seek ye first the good things of the mind," Bacon admonishes us, "and the rest will either be supplied, or its loss will not be felt." Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.--- The Greatest Men Have Not been "Serene."--- "No, the greatest men have not been “serene.” They have had, it is true, an ultimate courage, a power of creating beauty where nature has put only horror, which may, to a petty mind, appear like serenity. But their courage has had to surpass that of common men, because they have seen deeper into the indifference of nature and the cruelty of man. To cover up these things with comfortable lies is the business of cowards; the business of great men is to see them with inflexible clarity, and yet to think and feel nobly. And in the degree in which we can all be great, this is the business of each one of us." Bertrand Russell--- READ, READ, and READ What we need in this country is not MORE faith, but more reason for the sake of spiritual growth. It means abandoning outworn beliefs and the welcoming of new and fresh ideas. We need to develop a deeper vision, to be willing to forsake our obsolete and shallow vision. The road to spiritual growth lies in distrusting what we already believe by deliberately challenging the validity of what we have been traditionally taught to hold dear and holy. We must learn to question everything. It is the basis of spiritual growth and intellectual maturity.--- We must therefore develop the habit of reading avidly and judiciously. I therefore say: read, read, and read. To begin to discover not only the beauty of rationality, but also the harmony of veracity. As we develop the habit of reading, especially books on the scientific way of thinking, we will never, ever again, be the foolish victims of mediocrity, or worse still – be the promoters of a sick society. However the case may be, those of us who refuse to read are no better off than those who can’t read at all. Poch Suzara