I was talking to a parent today. Worried about her child's future, she asked me to guide the child. I told her that the child is struggling with two things: first, the uncertainty about the competitive exam, and second, the parents' anxiety. It would be a great favour to the child if the burden of the second is taken away from her shoulders. Anxiety is very natural for parents in this world, which is so competitive that everything from getting admission to a good school, to a college, to getting a job is so challenging. There are so many distractions, and it is one of the biggest challenges for parents to ensure that their children remain focused on their studies in a world full of them.
But why are some children so focused while others get distracted easily? Similarly, why do some parents get so anxious? Probably because we do not want to observe reality with clarity. If a child observes reality, it will not take him the study of rocket science to understand that it is exploration alone that gives him joy, and for the sake of exploration, he will have to develop the skill set in whatever subject he wants to explore. To explore quantum physics, one must study its developments to date. Then only one can build on the top of the developments so far. One can also clearly see that the instinctive pleasure lasts only a very short time. We want to have ice cream again and again. We want to have that time pass with our friends again and again. We want to watch movies again and again for entertainment. We want to look at the mobile screen repeatedly. If we can see clearly that we derive joy out of exploration, why would we like to waste time in these pleasures?
Similarly, the problem with the parents is that they somehow want to see their children succeed according to society's standards. They are restless because they have tied their own identity to their children's success. It is no longer an achievement of the children, it's an achievement of the parents. It has become a mission in their lives, and, in fact, that's why they feel let down when the children refuse to be their tools for bringing them glory. Or when they have their own plans. Or when they want to do it at their own pace. Don't parents see clearly that each person on this Earth is unique? Can't we see that it is grossly unfair to load our expectations on the shoulders of somebody else, be it our own children? Can't we see that the biggest role of the parents is to inculcate that drive for exploration in the children, and since we have never explored in our lives and have lived all through our lives in a confused state, weighing different options available to us, while never being clear about the meaning of life, we are passing on the same confusion to the children.
Until parents understand the meaning of life, not the one sold in the market of society, but the one which we have understood through our own realisations, by direct observation, with unadulterated analysis, not conclusions drawn by a grossly lazy mind, how will they guide their children? At best, they will teach them to make choices. Choices between one hard and one easy option. They will tell the child to choose the difficult option so that his future life will be easy. What a contradiction. The child is smarter. He will say Why wait for the future? Let me have an easy option right now. Even if the child somehow listens to the parent, he will soon have to make the same choice at work. He will now choose the easy option.
Can we see why the hard option looks so hard to the child? It is because of propaganda from parents, society, and humanity as a whole. Propaganda that is easy is good. You choose difficult now to have easy later. When the fundamental framework of life is corrupted, how can the poor child survive? On the contrary, if the parents are busy exploring different things in their lives and the child sees the fun of exploration, it will come naturally to the child. The difficult option will not be difficult for two reasons. First, the difficulty will become a challenge the moment we choose to explore. Second, the child will experience the joy of exploration, and therefore, the fatigue of effort will disappear because it comes with the joy of exploration. I feel that, as parents, our biggest role is to learn to observe life's reality and pass it on to our children, rather than make it our mission in life to nag them. A little love with the child will make us aware that every time we nag, it sounds like a fire alarm in the mind of the poor child who is handling his own anxieties and fears. In the name of love, we actually end up torturing our children because we have not worked on our own awareness.
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