Monday, July 26, 2004

Life with Chinmayee!

This was written on Feb 09 ´04, but still relevant!!

Life with Chinmayee has been a very good learning experience. Or perhaps an unlearning experience. She has been teaching a lot of things ever since she came about ten months back.

The latest of her teachings is that you should never give up. And it is precept by practice when she drives home the point. Only I have to be ready to grasp the lesson. When you are trying to achieve something, there will be many obstacles that may throw you off balance and make you fall. You should get up and have a go at it again because there is great joy in achieving what you want.

Lesson number two is that in order forget the pain of one setback, the best way out is to distract yourself or focus on something else. Very often you will find a situation where you have been felled and feeling pain. The best course is to focus on something else and momentarily forget the setback. That way you are always happy. Anyway, you will go back to the previous one if you must and you can be more careful then.

Lesson number three is that you should be uncomplicated. If you are hungry, eat; if you are thirsty, drink; if you are sleepy, sleep. There cannot be any other solution to these things. We tend to complicate our life without necessity.

Lesson number four is 'Communicate'. You must communicate to the other person about what you want. It is a fundamental necessity for human beings because we can't live without the society.

Actually, you must be gathering your vocabulary to ridicule me for preaching such simple and fundamental things. But coming as it does from my ten month old daughter, they are great lessons. I am sure there is nothing in it that is unique to my daughter. I am sure the child who was born a year ago your next door will be doing pretty much the same things -- trying to walk, keep falling and trying again; forgetting the pain of a fall by seeing a dog bark; crying for food when hungry, for sleep when feeling sleepy and demanding the parent or the grandparent to take her on a small outing so that he can see the world. Actually I often wonder that I too was like this once, perhaps trying to teach the elders around me pretty much the same things. Perhaps you will wonder that you too were like this. Then why are we a lot different today, so much so that we are trying to learn what we 'preached' even as a child? That is why I said life has been an unlearning experience with Chinmayee. We have to unlearn a lot to actually get back to that pure and unsullied state of mind. I am sure there are many more lessons lurking there in every day life of these wonderful kids.

1 comment:

SowmyA said...

Hi manme, very well written. Lucid n expressive. Cheers

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Love to blog. Every time I turn joyous or in extreme pain, I blog. Huge believer of 'charity begins at home'.