In today’s world, societal compulsions and exposure to harmful media distractions and propaganda laced thoughts invade us every now and then! Well there are advantages and challenges in equal measure- end of the day a knife is a knife- whether you choose to chop vegetables or your sanity really depends on you and end of it ends up defining you!
If you have observed children- yes those tiny cute little things that keep on wailing, giggling, laughing and enjoying at the expense of their parents and grand parents and as they grow; at times teachers- you will find some remarkable survival techniques that they can teach us! No matter how smart you think you are, whether you graduated from Harvard or MIT, all of that becomes a big meaningless attribute the moment you encounter kids in their elements! If you are a good student- kind of a student for life personality- they are the never ending source of teaching you amazing things- until they get exposed to the senseless and screwed up materialistic and consumption driven madness which starts innocently with the first bucket of fries or small tub of ice cream!
Focus and get what you want: This is the first simple lesson that kids can give you. This is also what is taught over and over, year after year, this what your math and science teacher told you and this what your boss would have kept on telling you or yelling at you- depending on what type of love-hate equation you share with that person!
Of course, this maxim gets a lot more complicated as we end up growing and get into the endless traps of prejudices, assumptions and begin to experiment with our limited intelligence (even this is, by auto-bias set at a higher then real value by ourselves!)
So what is the real way of going about this simple thought? Well, do as the kids do, be diligent, be cranky and be driven intrinsically, irrespective of everything around them, no sense of “what will people say”, “what great aunt will think about”, “what dad’s boss and friend’s think about me”.
The fact is kids are superlatively smart (as long as they are unexposed to nonsense around- that starts with so called schooling and then just gets amplified with time) and know to find a way around their problem- which could be as simple as tying up the doll’s hair or fixing the wheel of a car or sketching their image about the world as they feel it and as they see their parents… small things indeed but end up saying a lot!
As we grow up, peer pressure, confirmation bias, misplaced self-identity all of this and all the unwanted muck that society feeds into us- the feeling and emoting and reacting society (not a proactive, responsive and responsible society) drags us further down into chaos to such an extent that we loose the child in us some where along the journey and with it we loose the most original part of us! that’s a loss that keeps us haunting always and then we seek solace in trying to rediscover the same in our offspring (which just adds up to be being another element for a rapidly developing disaster!)
Not to be a sob and go on writing like an obsessed person, to give you the space to think and reflect, the idea here is- the path to know yourself better is to know and reach out to the child in you (if that child is alive and kicking- it’s great) and start viewing life around you through this lens- it may not be an answer to all your problems but certainly will be an answer to quite a few of your unwanted miseries and unwanted headaches that you would have given refuge to in your mental asylum (as in mind!)
Finally, if you are still wondering if the kid in you is there or not- think about the last time you had a crazy, stupid moment and you laughed it off like there was no tomorrow and you did not care a damn about it!
I end here today, and hope you are able to reach out to a few smiles and giggles from here on everyday and take a little load off your burdensome existence!
Feel like yelling or complimenting, do get in touch with me! I am dying to interact with grown up kids!
An Aura of Fleeting Thoughts 