After The Fall
Everyone falls; it’s not a question of ‘If’, but ‘When’. And 2020 was one of the worst falls Malaysians have ever had. Covid-19 brought the world to a standstill; planes couldn’t fly, people couldn’t work, and children couldn’t learn or play. And for us at Havan and our shelter homes, we faced difficulties we never would have thought of.
But we fought hard, and innovated to stay alive, not only for our business, but also the children who relied on us, to be there for them. So we brought the classroom to them, through online classes and dedicated teachers, willing to adapt to the tough situations. It wasn’t easy, but “nothing worth doing is ever easy”.
We explored stories and lessons, that we can bring to our kids, to help them cope with the situation - ‘to the big fall’ - that everyone is going through.
Through this exploration, we found a beautiful yet powerful book called “After The Fall” by Dan Santat. In it, Dan illustrates wonderfully how Humpty Dumpty loved sitting up high above on a wall, and watching the birds fly by. But one day, he had an accident, one day he had a “Great Fall”.
Fortunately, he was put back together again physically, but mentally, he became afraid of trying to go back up the wall, because of the fear of falling again. Weeks later, as he was playing with it, Humpty’s cherished paper birds got stuck on the wall, the same spot where he fell. But he wouldn’t and couldn't let his cherished toy go.
So he climbed, and climbed:
“I didn’t look up,”
“I didn’t look down,”
“I just kept climbing,“
“One Step At a Time”
He said to himself.
Until he was no longer afraid and he got to the top.
Here at Havan Clothing, we simply love the moral of the story, and how symbolic it has become for our shelter home children and the difficult year 2020 has been for us. Through Dan Santat’s brilliant masterpiece in storytelling, and the teachers we have here at Havan, we inspired our kids to look past their failures and just keep trying. Because it’s not what you do when you fall down, but what you do…
“After The Fall”