Parenting Stories (and more) from the desk of an imperfect parent
Yog joins Pavan for his fitness class. While Pavan sweats it out, he works as Pavan personal secretary juggling his phone, electrolytes and hand sanitizer like a pro.
Office phone rings. It is a colleague from work.
Yog: Hello!
Colleague: Hello! Can I speak to Pavan?
Yog: Papa is exercising. Battery is only 1%. I will call you later.
Colleague: Oh Ok! Take care!
#ConversationsWithYog #LowOnBattery
In the recent past, I have seen two completely conflicting kind of posts on Social media. One kind encourage and excite parents, like me, to enroll their children in coding classes. These posts equate coding to life skills and subtly make you believe that there is a Steve Jobs hiding inside each child just waiting to come out. If you enroll your child in coding classes, you would have made the career of your child. Needless to say, these kind of posts are typically created and shared by companies conducting coding classes. They want you to enroll your child so that they can make money and yes, of course also teach your child coding.
The other kind of posts, like most other kind of posts, make fun of the first kind. These posts are written by concerned citizens of this planet who are appalled at the audacity of these companies trying to teach coding to young kids. These citizens point of view is that young kids should be running around, free playing, in place of sitting behind a computer screen learning coding. Some other arguments include the fact that coding will be automated in the future, hence why should children invest their energies learning it. Learning coding should not be equated to learning problem solving. Problem solving is better taught in real life than behind computer screen. And so on.
Believe me, I have seen so many of both kinds of these posts that I just couldn’t stop myself from sharing my own point of view. I truly feel that both sides in this debate of coding vs no-coding seem to be missing the point. I quote Khalil Gibran here because no one else can pen this point better than him.
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow.”
If you understand these poignant lines you would have probably found your answer to whether your child should learn coding or not. Bottom line is that the child should do what the child wants to do and not what you believe is right for the child. If the child is interested in technology and everything related to it, please help him build his skills in that area by learning coding, electronics, gaming, etc. However, if the child is interested in dancing, swimming, arts, music or any other zillion things out there, please help him build skills in those areas. In the latter case, do not tie him behind a computer screen hoping he will become the next Steve Jobs. Because, simply speaking, no matter what you do, he won’t. If his heart lies somewhere else, he will be longing to get there sooner or later.
The answer to this debate is so simple, yet I see so many parents struggling. Some people question if children as young as 7 can even understand concepts of programming? Can a child in second grade understand molecules and electrons and build electronic circuits of their own? Can a three old cook? The answer to all the above questions is the same. A child is capable of learning anything and achieving everything that they want to. There is no age too young 0r, for that matter, too old to learn something. It is the parents, teachers and school systems which create boundaries for children restricting them to learn only those things which are part of the syllabus for that year. And forcing them to learn all of them, even if a child is interested in learning only one out of them. If we can learn to view the child as an independent entity without putting labels like 7 year old, First grader, Scientist, Dancer, etc, we will be able to provide the learning that they are meant to receive. Do not force your beliefs, your forecasting ability or your fears on to your child. As Gibran said, let your child choose for themselves and live the life that they were born to live. And yes, while they live their life, you go ahead and live yours fully!
When I celebrate every moment of my life,
How do I celebrate a special day?
When 1011 cells in my body die each day,
How do I feel scared from death?
When everyone, whom I love, is a part of me,
How do I feel uncomfortable being away from a loved one?
When you and me and everything around us came from the same source and are headed back there again,
How do I question where I came from and where am I headed?
When greater than 99% mass of each atom in my body is empty space,
How do I not embrace the emptiness in my mind?
When both science and spirituality are all about the play of energy
How do I live in a scientific world without being spiritual?
Yog explaining me family concepts through our Solar System.
Mama, you know there is a black hole near our Solar System. The black hole and our Sun are constantly fighting to take the earth inside them.
I show amazement and ask, “So who do you think will win – the Sun or the Black Hole?”
Yog (with full confidence) – The Sun will win because the Sun is Earths Father. The Sun is the father of the Solar System. Earth will have to go to it’s father.
The ocean encompasses the land
Yet the both couldn’t be more different
We seek agreements in relationships
Knowing very well that opposites attract
We choose to love unconditionally
Hoping that our love will be returned
We believe in freedom of our expression
How dare, someone else questions our freedom
We believe there is one God
We call upon that God to save us and crush the enemy
These are the contradictions of life
Answers which no one found
It is human nature, they say
to behave like animals in our own way
It was fun learning and building electrical circuits (definitely not when I was in school) along with my seven year old and his friend. I will never forget the joy of seeing the little LED light not only switch on but staying on. Having blown just a few LED lights before, the thought that we could make a working circuit was immensely satisfying for all of us. In fact the book that we followed to learn electronics had, in a step by step fashion, taught us how to blow up the LED light. Yes, you read it right. I was taught how to fail right at the start of the book. It did feel painful to trash a few LEDs into the bin first by me and then by my son and then by his friend, but then, we wanted to learn how to fail in the right way. So RIP LEDs.
Today evening, as the night lights went out a random thought made me think about the fused LED lights lying in the dust bin. I wondered why the author made us learn how to short circuit the lights before teaching us the correct way of making the circuit. Why was it so important to fail before we succeed? Was it because the joy of succeeding is always much more when we have failed multiple times before? Or was it because this was the best way to learn the importance of a resistor in a circuit? Or perhaps, because, some lessons in life are learnt best from failure than from success.
No sooner than this thought was in my mind that I remembered a conversation with my daughter some days back, urging her not to fail in a task at her school. Our conversation had been something like this, “Please finish it on time. Please ensure that files are saved properly. Please write in a way so that the teacher can understand your handwriting. This is an important assignment. ..”
My mind stalled for a few seconds. I felt numb, maybe something like the LED light in the bin. Was I not being a good parent protecting my child from failure? Was I not being a good parent making sure she succeeds? Was I not being a good parent saving her from pretty much the same mistake I have committed multiple times in my life? Isn’t this the role of parents, to teach children how to succeed? The answer I got back was, “Yes! I was not being a good parent trying to protect her from failure because failure is not a bad thing. The number of lessons hidden in failure are far more than in success. How could I expect her to succeed if she hadn’t learnt these lessons. How could she build a fool proof circuit if she had never been allowed to blow a few LEDs? Even if she did succeed in building a working circuit the first time, what was the guarantee that she would be able to make more complex, heavier circuits in life without understanding the importance of things life resistors? When, I was happy making my own set of mistakes when I was under 20, why can’t I let my daughter fall when she is barely 14? What I learnt in over 40 years of falling and picking myself up, I want her to learn in under 20 and that too without falling even once. Why? Why am I so scared of her failing? Don’t I trust her to pick herself up if she fails? Don’t I believe that she has what it takes to learn what needs to be learnt? Don’t I respect her ability to choose for herself?”
I must admit, my mind has slowed down with age. With so much of introspection, it almost went into a shut down mode. I knew I was wrong to coach my daughter on petty things but was I ready to accept one more failure? Was I ready to sit back and let her blow up her own set of LEDs? Could I truly enjoy the process of failure both for her as well as for me? Maybe not, but honestly if I truly trust her abilities and her spirit, I have to provide her own set of LEDs, resistors, wires and rest of the paraphernalia so that she can play with it the way she wants to. It is her life and she has every right to blow or build the circuit she likes to.
Until next time, wish me happy failing and learning.
We are living through times where we have been forced to encounter death in more ways than one. It seems to be coming closer to us making us feel cornered. There seems to be no way out. There seems to be no place to hide. Simply speaking, it has scared the shit out of a lot of us. It used to scare me too until …
I once read that the easiest way to overcome fear about something was to understand that thing or simply do that thing. While in college, I was scared of missing an episode of my favorite soap opera. I was so frustrated with this fear and how it controlled my life, that I gave up watching soap operas for a long time. Another example. I had a deep rooted fear of hunger right from my childhood. I just couldn’t contemplate staying hungry. The minute I sensed a rumbling in my stomach I had to eat something. To overcome this fear (and for a number of other spiritual reasons), I now fast each day for 14 hours a day. Nowadays, I occasionally watch soap operas but I have never felt the of missing an episode. I do break my fast some days but I am definitely not scared of hunger anymore.
Like most people out there, I was scared of death. Not so much about dying myself, but more so about losing people I love dearly. So I had to apply the same technique to death – I had to understand it. I obviously could not kill myself to understand death, so I took the easy way out. No, no! Don’t get me wrong! I did not kill anyone else either. I chanced upon the book on Death by Sadhguru. It is called “Death – a book for all those who shall die” and I managed to overcome my fear through understanding it.
This blog is not a summary of that book. The book is much more deep, more profound than anything I can possibly write. This blog is a small analogy to help my friends and family understand death, so that hopefully they might not feel scared of it. Unlike my silly fears of missing episodes or staying hungry, death is something that is not a probability in our lives. It is a certainty. 100% of us, will die 100%. So let’s start.
Imagine that you are a student of 3rd grade in a school. You are specifically in 3rd grade, because you have successfully completed 2nd grade and now need to learn the maths, science and languages of 3rd grade. When you have learnt everything there was to learn in 3rd grade, you will be promoted to 4th grade. Once you complete 4th grade, you will move on to 5th grade, 6th grade and so on. Someday you will complete school, then your Bachelor’s degree, then your Masters and then maybe a PHD as well. Someday you will come back to the same school you had studied in, as it’s Principal. Being the Principal, you no longer learn at the school, but you create the systems and the processes that run the school. You hire and train the teachers and you check which students are ready to be promoted and which are not. Now, you are no longer a part of the creation of the school but you have become the Creator of the school, itself. All students at the school study hard at school for this same ultimate purpose – to become one with the Creator. Creating a school as a principal, or creating a business as a CEO or creating teams as a Manager, we all want to grow from being part of the Creation to becoming the Creator one day.
Life is also like this school. We enter each new life as a first step in a new grade. We get a new body (like a new Uniform that we get in school). We have been assigned our time and our set of things we need to learn in that time. If we are able to learn our assigned syllabus in our assigned time, voila! we are promoted to the next grade aka the next life. But before we can wear the uniform and take the bag of the next grade, we have to shed the uniform of the grade that we have already completed. Imagine, how life would be if we continued to wear all our previous grade uniforms right from Kindergarden up till PHD one on top of the other! It is not a good idea to continue wearing a uniform which has probably become small, tight and dirty by the end of the grade. It is best to shed it and wear a new one which suits just right for your body and the skills that you are going to learn in that grade. Death is nothing else but shedding the uniform (the body) that we were assigned to wear for that grade. Does it sound overly simple? Yes, it does. But believe me, that is all death is. Death, in no way, indicates the end of the being who was wearing that body. Death only means that the being is no longer wearing the same body in which we are used to seeing it. The being is very much still there but without its body. Sooner or later (depending on how much syllabus for that life has been completed), the being will wear a new uniform and take up a new body. In the next life, whether it is assigned to the next grade, or the same grade again depends on whether it had completed its learning as assigned to it in the past life. The being might also be demoted to a lower grade, if it behaved in a way that proved he had forgotten lessons learnt in the previous past lives (grades).
Simply because we do not understand death for what it is, we do not prepare ourselves for it. All our lives we work hard to complete the syllabus and prepare ourselves for the next grade of life, but when the time comes to move to the next grade, we become scared and we panic. At the time of death, in place of praying for promotion to a higher grade along with a stronger uniform, we start praying to stay back in the same grade with the same uniform which has already become unusable. Why would we want to do that to ourselves or to anyone whom we love? Why should anyone be stuck in the same grade with a rotting uniform when he has the chance to move to the next grade with a brand new uniform? It is our attachment to that person and our lack of understanding of the process of life and death that makes us so short-sighted. We are willing to bear the stench coming from their uniform just so that they are close to us. But we are not willing to let them move on to the next grade of their life.
How do we ensure we have completed our syllabus of our life? How do we know it is our time to die? Unfortunately, completing our syllabus and time to die are not necessarily tied together. One may complete the syllabus earlier and then have some extra time at hand. This is a good thing to happen. The being can, in this case, if it is willing, pick up books of the next grade and start reading them in preparation of the next life. On the other hand, if we waste our time in class, do not listen carefully and understand our subject well, we will most likely not learn what we came to learn in that grade. In such cases, our time will be up, but our syllabus will not be. In such scenarios, we will have to be reborn in the same grade and complete the learning. Till such time, we do not complete the learning of the said grade, we will keep coming back to the same grade. Luckily, the school of life does not allow for cheating, or copying or bribing the teachers in order to get promoted. You simply have to complete your learning in order to get promoted. If someone chooses to exit their own life because the questions in a particular grade seem too tough, he/she is simply postponing those questions for the next life. The lessons have to be learnt, the questions have to be answered for all the grades by all of us one day or the other.
In some cases, you might be paying attention and doing well in your grade. But it just so happens, that your uniform tears. You keep stitching it up for a time but it simply refuses to hold up till the end of the grade. In such cases, you do not have a choice but to shed the uniform and wait for a new uniform to become available for you, for the same grade. When you were such a good student, why did the uniform have to tear? You see, these are completely unrelated events. Your uniform can start tearing because you did not take good care of it. It can also tear because someone pulled at it , or you pulled at it while it was stuck somewhere or simply because you tore someone else’s uniform in the past grade and it is time for you to pay back now. You can continue attending school in a damaged uniform but only till so much time. When the time comes that the openings in the uniform have started revealing areas best kept covered, a sensible being will shed the uniform and seek a new one.
In summary, death is not a bad thing. While it does mean that we will not be able to speak to or hug someone we love, death is the doorway to many higher grades for the person who died. All we need to do is live our life fully, learn all our lessons well (that is a topic for another time). At the time of death, lets pray to the Creator to promote us higher grade so that one day, we can ultimately join him in the process of creation.
Notes – My understanding of death is based on the book by Sadhguru and the teachings of our Guru Avdhoot Shivanand of the Shiv Yog Lineage. I have used the analogy of grades in school to help readers understand the process of life and death. You can choose to disagree with me basis your knowledge, culture or religion. Even if your thoughts on death are different than mine, as outlined above, I am pretty sure these basic facts of death will remain the same –
Yog and me discussing Jobs people do (aka Professions as per his EVS text book).
Mama – So what do you think is my profession?
Yog (instantly rattles off) – You are a cook. Papa is a Worker and Tatha (Grandfather) is a Builder because he loves making houses.
Mama – So what do you want to become when you grow big?
Yog (beaming from ear to ear) – I want to be a TV watcher.
Mama (bursting out with laughter) – Let me know how it goes for you!
With that I shut down his EVS book. I think there are some more loose ends to tie before we have another Professional Discussion!
I run.
I pant.
I cease.
I wonder what was my destination.
I meet Death and realize it wasn’t what I had thought it’d be.
I run but do not find either Heaven or Hell.
I run. I pant. I cease to be dead.
I meet a new life.
More determined this time…
I run fast. I pant less. I live a little longer and then I cease.
Wondering still, what was my destination meant to be?
I meet Death but not the promised lands of angels.
But Hey! I can run faster now. The land seems just in reach.
But just before I get there, I cease to be dead, again.
Hundreds of times over, I have lived this cycle.
Life. Death. Life. Death. Life.
Yet, I do not know where I am and who I want to be.
Somewhere inside, something breaks or maybe something connects.
I start to wonder, maybe this is not how life and death should be.
Maybe, I am not looking at it the right way.
Maybe, I am not looking at the right place.
I have searched everywhere outside.
Maybe, just maybe, it is time to look inside.
Maybe, if I just sit down and close my eyes,
Listen to my heart beat and feel my breath rise
I will hear my faint inner voice.
I stop running and panting.
I stand still, still like a clock pausing on time.
The world stops with me.
I hear the birds chirping, the wind blowing, the trees swaying.
I feel the twinkling stars, the blazing sun and the countless smiles.
I close my eyes and focus on the air moving inside.
Just like that, the world outside merges with me.
The birds, wind, trees, stars, sun and smiles
Both the Heaven and the Hell, alive
All of it and so much more, are now within me,
Breathing, kicking, full of life.
After hundreds of cycles of living and dying
I have finally arrived.
Shilpa Roy Kota 