We
differentiate between our children and other children. We take enough care to
help our children grow into physically and mentally healthy adults. We want
them to grow into adults who have desired ability to deal with the competitive
world. Often our excessive concern for their proper growth makes us commit
errors that harm them. To judge if our children are growing properly, we either
compare them with other children also growing with them or with some image of
an ideal child that we have in our mind.
There is no doubt that the parents, teachers and other adults
are responsible to help the children learn as to how they must lead their lives
to survive in this world with less physical and psychological problems. This is
also true that we do not intentionally avoid taking up that responsibility or
commit careless mistakes in fulfilling our responsibility. However, things do
not work the way we often want them to.
Many among us are aware that children view the world
differently from the way adults view the world. Moreover, each child views the
world in his own way. It, therefore, becomes necessary to carry out many
experiments to arrive at the right wavelength of communication with the
children with a view to helping them out in growing in an appropriate manner.
In this busy world, it is very difficult to have the necessary patience to
handle each child in the manner that may be needed. Hence, we work with
standard methods and on best effort basis. We can say that we sadly lack the creativity
that is essential for bringing up a child so as to make him develop into an
individual who can make right contributions in the affairs of the world. That
is the reason why stereotyped intelligence being transmitted from one
generation to another, thereby making it too difficult to effect changes in
this world that actually benefit the mankind.
Maybe, if we learn being with the children, not our children
in particular, but all the children we come across, we would be able to learn
many things about the dynamics of life that may benefit us. It can be argued that
the job of being with the children is being done by the schools we have.
Unfortunately, we have converted our schools into institutions that transmit
the thoughts of the society that is not as just and as eager to make the right
changes in the human beings as it should be.
The man has caused many complications in his life and in the
world around him. He cannot afford to continue transmitting those complications
to future generations. We can no longer trust our own intelligence and our own
intentions. Although it is difficult to acquire simplicity, but it is high time
that we learn to be with children to know how the things can be viewed without
complicating them. Lack of simplicity makes our lives a burden. Lack of
simplicity is the biggest deterrent in spiritual growth. The man is born
simple; he acquires complications later. The best way to relearn simplicity is by
being with the children.
PROMOD KUMAR SHARMA
[The writer of this blog is also the author of “Mahatma A
Scientist of the Intuitively Obvious” and “In Search of Our Wonderful Words”.]
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