It’s the breeze of Spring! There’s a mother frog preparing to lay her eggs down the lake. *Splash* There she jumps into the lake, and swim her way towards the plants under the lake and lay her eggs upon them.

A few days had past, the eggs are turning into tadpoles now!
Then Mother Frog smiled at them and said “Ribbit! Welcome to this beautiful world my cute little darlings! I am your mother!”

The tadpoles are confused as they look at themselves and their mother, it’s a big difference. Then they asked “Mother? You’re our mother?”
Mother Frog nodded her head and said “Yes! I’m your mother!”
The little tadpoles are puzzled by the difference of their appearance with their mother, and then they asked “Why don’t we have 4 legs but just a tail? We’re all black and you’re green, it’s so beautiful!”

Mother Frog: “Oh my dear! It’s because you’re still very young. And when all of you grew up soon, you will have 4 legs and a skin colour as beautiful as well!”
This time, there’s a fly that flew across the lake. Out of a sudden, Mother Frog threw her long and elastic tongue in the air and catches the fly.
The tadpoles were amazed and stunned. “Wow! Mother, you’re great!”
Mother Frog: You could do the same thing when you grow up.

The tadpoles are all happy after hearing what their mother has said. “We want to grow up quick! We want to have legs and complexion like yours, mother!”
Mother Frog: “Very well, but now you must learn to swim.”
Tadpoles: “Swim…?”
Mother Frog: Yes! Well you can’t live on land at your age now. You could only stay in the water. Just move your tail left and right and you could swim easily, try it!”
Then, all the tadpoles started swinging their tail, but none of them can make it. They began to be impatient and decide to give up.
Mother Frog quickly encourages them as they’re trying to give up. “Giving up so early? Now which one of you said that you want to be just like me just now? This is just a little challenge, there are more to learn!”
After hearing this, the tadpoles turned speechless.

Mother Frog: “From now on, you’re going to have to be hard-working! Don’t be lazy, or else you couldn’t make it. I’ll come back to you after a few days. By the time we meet again, you will have a pair of rear legs and I’ll teach you something new then.”
The tadpoles promised mother to be hard-working as they see their mother leaves.

As their mother left, they didn’t practice at all! They are playing hide and seek. But, among them, there’s one little tadpole who wishes to be like the mother, so he continuously practices swimming. He is often laughed by the other tadpoles when he practices. His name is Daric.
Daric: “This isn’t the time to have fun, we should practice more. Let’s practice together and I’m sure we can make it!”
The other tadpoles: “Practice? We’re not as dumb as you! We’ll wait till we get legs.” They never listen no matter how hard Daric tried to encourage them.

6 days past by…
Mother Frog came back and found that their tails are gone, and they’ve got a pair of legs now!
Mother Frog: “Oh, look at you! You’ve all grown so much!”
Tadpoles: “Mother! We don’t have our tails anymore! We couldn’t swim now!”
Mother Frog: “It’s alright. Don’t forget you’ve got a pair of legs now! Now you could swim with these legs. Trying pushing back the water by using your legs, you can swim further as you push harder. This helps a lot when we get to the land. After some time, you’ll get to join mother on the land! Remember, practice makes perfect!”

Daric: “Let’s learn to swim with our legs!”
Tadpoles: “We knew how to swim with the legs! You’re the only dumb one that doesn’t know it. We don’t need to practice anymore.”
The tadpoles tried very hard, they kick and kick and kick! But it’s still very hard for them. On the other hand, Daric found it much easier and he kept on practicing with his legs.
As days gone by, the little black tadpoles are beginning to turn green. They’ve even got front legs now!
Now, Mother Frog returned to see her kids.
Mother Frog: “It’s time! You can come up to the land now!”
The little tadpoles are all little frogs now! “Yay! Finally we get to live on the land! It must be fun up there!” Little Daric shows not much expression, but he’s still very anticipated about it.
The breeze greeted the little frogs as they climb up to the land one by one. The sound of their excitement fills the silent swamp.

Mother Frog: “Keep up, keep up. Is everyone here yet?”
Little Frogs: “Yes mother! We’re all here!”
Mother Frog: “Great! Now let’s look for food around the swamp area! But be careful, there are snakes hiding around the swamp that’ll eat us!”
Daric: “What if we come across to a snake?”
Mother Frog: “If you see a snake, then it’s time to jump for your life! Use your rear legs!”
Daric: “Jump with our rear legs?”
Mother Frog: “Just like the way you swim with your rear legs in the water. Try it!”
And so, Daric tried to give a few jumps. “Wow! This is fun! I didn’t know that I could jump so high!”

The rest of the little frogs felt excited as they see Daric jump. They gave their try too, but none of them could jump higher than Daric does.
Mother Frog: “OK, it’s time to look for food now! We’ll move with our rear legs.” The little frogs used a lot of energy to jump around the swamp, they were all gasping for air, except for Daric.
Mother Frog: “Now let’s catch some bugs with our tongue. Just like this….” *Sluurrrp* (The mother threw her tongue out again and caught a bug)
The little frogs gave it a try and all of them were having a good meal at the swamp.

However, in the grassy area, there lies a snake, quietly and patiently waiting for an opportunity.
When the snake was about to make a move, Daric spotted her!
Daric: “Argh! There’s a monster! Quick, jump!”
Mother Frog: “That’s not a monster! That’s a snake! Jump!”
Everyone was jumping for their lives! The little frogs are getting tired after a while, but the snake is having no sign of slowing down! Daric was the fastest one, but the rest fall behind. Just when the snake was about to catch them, an eagle from the sky caught the snake with its claw out of a sudden.
Thanks to the eagle, the little frogs are safe now. After this incident, the little frogs regret for not practicing well when they were young. They’ve nearly lost their lives. Hence, they’ve all promised to learn from Daric.

Little Frogs: “Sorry mother, we never practice well, and we made you worried.”
Mother Frog: “My dear, everything is fine now. As long as you catch up on your practice, everything will be just fine.”
Little Frogs: “We must learn from Daric! He’s our role model!”
Daric: “Oh, no. I’m not your role model, mother is!”
The Mother Frog laughed and said: “Most importantly, we must stand strong on our challenges to achieve our aim!”
All the little frogs nodded their heads and said: “Yes, Mother!”
[END]



Words for the JDs

The message of this story, is that we must keep on learning and practicing to achieve growth. We must cherish every opportunity to learn because what we learned today, will be our treasure in the future.

It may seem like nothing could happen, but we must always be prepared. Just like Daric from the story, to continuously practice and learn is what made him being able to get away from danger. There are subjects we favour, and subjects that we don’t like in the school, but still we must gain different knowledge. Please do not fear the subjects that you do not excel in. Be brave, find out your weakness and get help from your teachers or seniors. Together with spirit and challenge, you must believe that you can make it!

What’s the benefit of learning?
Knowledge build up who we are, our character. A famous philosopher, Francis Bacon once quoted: “Knowledge builds up our character. Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; morals, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.” Now the power and ability of human is limited, we might not be able to do what Francis Bacon quoted, but we must try our best in understanding and gaining knowledge from different fields. For this do not only build up the full character, but to enlarge our perception towards to world too.

According to Plato, those who are born with talent should be educated till the age of 35. After that, these people should have intensive training for 15 years to be the best capable person. The ancient philosopher and educator of China, Confucius mentioned “When I am fifteen, I aspired to learn. At thirty, I can be independent. At forty, I am not deluded. At fifty, I knew my destiny. At sixty, I knew truth in all I heard. At seventy, I could follow my heart’s desire without overstepping the line.” (from Verse 4 of Analects of Confucius, Chapter 2). According to Confucius, “No one is born knowledgeable”, hence we must learn in our whole life. There’s a saying “Live and learn till we get old” that means life-long learning. To enrich our power and ability, the way is through studying and learning. All of these philosophers pointed out the significance of life-long education and learning.

Mr. Ikeda once said: “It’s important to train our character. Those who never train themselves would turn weak as they face challenges. Hence, those who thoroughly trained their faith during their youth are strong.”

Let’s not use most of our time to play like the little tadpoles did. Let’s learn together, challenge together, and obtain the absolute victory, the absolute happiness!

Labels: n. Story palace