Cover of The Elephants Child
Poem by Rudyard Kipling
following the story “Elephant’s Child” in “Just So Stories“
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.I let them rest from nine till five,
For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men.
But different folk have different views;
I know a person small
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes
One million Hows, Two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!
Self-Care Tip #233 – Define self-care with your adverbs.
The Interrogative adverbs of self-care: what, where, when, why, who and how. These are also known as The “Five W’s” (and one H) of self-care ;).
What is self-care?
Where?
When do we do self-care?
Why do self-care?
Who?
How do we do self-care?
I asked my daughter today,
M: What does taking care of yourself mean?
D: Taking care of myself so I’m healthy and can have fun when I’m old.
M: How do you do that?
D: I don’t know. I can’t think of that. (Conversation ends without flourish.)
These are our questions.
Questions: Please pick one or more of these and answer from your own self. Please tell me your story.
Self care is taking care of me by starting with me wherever I am all the time because I am important, and I need to do this for myself so I take the time to work through questions, suggestions, medical changes and attitude adjustments that will make me more healthy.
Seriously!
what, where, why, how – thank u nancy so much.
When I would assign an essay the first thing that happened was hands going up and asking how long must it be. My answer was “I don’t know” I said that when they had covered the topic they were done and being done was not dependent or congruent with length. Their answer would still be “Yeah, but how long does it have to be?” My formula then became the 5 ws (there is no sense or need for an apostrophe here – think about it – why?) and the h If they hit the 6 items they were finished despite length. Then they would ask “Yeah, but how…..
to funny carl. thank u
Why
ok i picked why becuase i love aksing questions a bit of a chance to answer one i can name so many reasons this blog and community has helped me so much personally i dont know how i never came accross it i can get sometimes threw the questions asked how i am feeling and this really helps me its hard to explain i live at leat 4000 miles away form this blog and yet it has become part of my life my doctor did say “when you are with the theropist you would not need this sanas blog as much” you know he did say that and he was wrong he was but so was i insted of me but i have also learned on this site that other people have feelings something that i never had really thought of so if i have learned so much in such little time in my my life i would ask a question back to my slef why not ?
kevin, u r just lovely. thank u for honoring us w your serious contemplation. blessings and keep on.
I like your daughter’s answer, I guess she’ll think about when she needs to?
she’s never going to stop teaching me things, i am happy to declare
I like the poem, but I don’t understand it.
Anyway, where, everywhere.
When, always, whether we think we need it or not. There’s always something to work on.
Why, so we can live the best life we can.
That’s all my lazy self will answer for now.
I would guess Duck, that it refers to Queen Victoria and the soldiers of the British Empire second half of 1800’s. They are all part of something bigger than themselves but all serve at the whim of the Queen and the whole set up is full of more questions than answers. That’s how I see it. Kipling puts the British overseas empire in words understandable to the British people themselves . The empire is much vaster than mother country.
(U saved me carl! Whew ;)!)
Ahem. If carl hadn’t beat me to it, I’d a been all over that! (wink)
Back to your lazy self, u sure work hard on selfcare. Hugs