Not everything I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten. But most of the good stuff I did. And most of that was taught through song.
“Love is something if you give it away… you end up having more!” Ain’t that the truth!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Phoebe, the 5 year old kindergartner who turned recycled cans into nickels into groceries to provide meals to homeless people. And how her tiny good deed snowballed into a giant, rolling wave of inspiration and charitable action.
And the words of this song came surging back to me with all the clarity of my 5 year old memory. It is so beautifully obvious and true. A penny itself is basically worthless. It’s barely worth more than the copper it takes to mint it. And I often find myself casually tossing pennies, or grimacing when I get a handful of change. Like so many other things in my life that are small and easily taken for granted, I’ve underappreciated the value of the penny.
But what happens when we acknowledge the importance of these little things? When we offer words of compliment or praise to those who do not need it, but always deserve it. When we express unprompted gratitude. When we practice random acts of kindness?
Those pennies gather, they grow in number and weight. They roll all over the floor. And this is the gathering power of small things: the little tokens of positivity that all together add up into a large-scale swell of great Love.
The secret of the Magic Penny is that there is no real magic in the penny at all. The magic is in the giving. And the more you give, the more comes back. What could be more simple or magical than that?
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