Between my previous post and this one, this happened:
- My wife and I gave birth to our second kid. Now we have a son and a daughter.
- My son started going to school.
- We shifted houses.
- Govt around the world went into multiple Covid-19 lockdowns. Many vaccines and many variants of the virus.
In this context I’ve learned and grown a lot. A lot of it happening in my time alone, early mornings when I wake up hours before everyone else or while driving to/from home. Now that my son started going to school, I’m back in the cartoons-children targeted ads-finances-responsibility cycle. The last time I was in it, I was a kid myself. And I see how my parents had to navigate. A lot of conversations with my son are about how he’s having fun in school. He’s not. Not all the time. In the 6 months since he started going to school I can see changes in what he’s happy/upset about. What he can cope with and what excites him to take the lead. And every transition has happened because of rejection or acceptance by his peers. We did take him out to parks and playing with kids at their houses long before he started going to school; but he being in school with other kids and none of them having their parents aound to approve/disapprove of their actions, has really catapulted his personal growth.
This is inline with how I’ve been growing personally. Trying out stuff by myself, finding my own footing, understanding every weakness and temptation. Professionally and personally. Seeds of every change were planted during thoughts in those me-time mornings.
My daughter loves to watch her brother playing, jumping, shouting, reading, running, everything he does. I often wonder what’s going on in her head when she’s watching him. Is she going to imitate his actions or find her own self by refusing to do what she doesn’t like in all that behaviour. That’s just about the entire gist of personal change in the context of individualism. But the point isn’t about what she’s observing. It’s about what she does during all those periods of observation. She does nothing. Nothing while watching her brother, nothing while playing with us except smiling or short shrieks or trying to bite our hand/clothes. All her changes are when she’s unsupervised and left alone… in the play mat/pen when we’re going about household chores. Rolling over, push ups and side planks, trying to sit, trying to crawl.
Makes me wonder… the worth of my approval or the lack of it towards what my kids do. With my son the level of communication has really grown. He’s sitting in the child seat right behind me when he’s talking excitedly about all the stuff he did in school that day. The games they played and all the mischief with mud, sticks, toilet paper, etc, etc,… He can’t see my face while I’m driving and I can’t see him. He has understood what pauses mean I’m giving all my attention to driving or considering a response. And he knows by the length of a pause if I’m about to ask a clarification or go along with his story.
A thing is considered to be living if it can respond to stimuli. I starting to think… our ability respond, the will to do so and the nature of response are developed only when unsupervised. #ātmā, #paramātmā, #FreeWill.
There’s another point to consider. What about the role of a guru/teacher/role-model/leader in inspiring change? Don’t we all learn and emulate? Don’t we follow instructions and repeat actions based on a set process? And this is what I think… They’re all only different types of parents. They approve/disapprove. Their actions can affect our experience but what we choose to do is still our own. Our own journey to find meaning, purpose and success.
kskspeaking 