Yes....now look!

Yesterday we were at the 'Shell Museum' and small aquarium at Mahabalipuram, with our friend and his son. While they were still engrossed in the shells, Raghav, who was more interested in the aquarium and feeding the fish, pulled me away there.

He was amazed at the 'collection', and was going 'wow' every few minutes, as he moved from one tank to another, admiring each fish's colours, shape and mannerisms, and talking to them like to his friends, while stretching out his palms and fingers against the glass. He was beaming from ear to ear, imagining them trying to suck his fingers and nibbling at them :)

While I enjoyed watching him and his interactions, I was filled with sadness as I thought of what limited freedom they must be enjoying, stuck up in a little rectangular space to call home, when they ought to be 'free' in the oceans and rivers where they really belonged. And I shared my sadness with him, and how that was a reason why I disliked zoos and aquariums.

These were some of the thoughts that flowed through....

• Zoos and aquariums confine animals/creatures to small spaces, where their freedom is limited.
• But through the sacrifice of this one creature for each species, if the majority of humans are able to understand them and want to take care of them and protect them, then is it okay to have them?
• Maybe we need animal communicators to go back and talk to them and tell us what to do and how to do it
• Everything rests in our seeing....what we can see and how much we can see, now. So there are no right and wrong ways of seeing, but just different kinds of seeing.

"Yes, I know how they must feel or how they would want a bigger space. I too feel that way. But now look...look at them now....how beautiful they are!", he said with his whole body lighting up. And I wondered to myself, how simple and beautiful the 'now' is, if only we learn to be open to it fully. Yes, I do need to see all points of view, look through all the windows that I possibly can, and then, when I have explored that fully and honestly (to myself), the present unfolds in all its glory and beauty....like it did for me through the words of my son.

'Yes.....now look..." is all that I need to do in any given moment. For that is all I have.

Two Seeing Eyes = Two Views or One Truth?

Yesterday, Raghav was as usual sitting in his tub of water after his morning bath. That is where he spends some time 'contemplating' and gets his inspiration and 'insights' :)

He grumbled a little bit about how some water went suddenly into his eye. A few minutes later, he came up with this:

"Amma, do you know that if you close one eye, and look at something in front of you with the other eye, you see one image, and if you do the same thing with the other eye, you see another image of the same thing, and that has slightly moved? It is an optical illusion because that thing hasn't really moved. And then, when you open both your eyes and look at the same thing, you see only one image. So I think, each eye sees a different view, a different image, which is then made into one image in the brain."

"How did you figure this out?" I asked, quite stunned at the way in which he described it to me!

"Oh, there is this water that went into my eye suddenly, and I had to close one eye as I could not see with it. And then I was looking at the space between my knees with one eye and then the other, and I discovered this," he said quite nonchalantly.

Some inspiration, just a tub of water can provide! :)

And I wondered to myself - 'Is that why perhaps multiple views on an issue are actually a gift? To make us see that there are actually not 'many views', but just 'one truth'? To see that it is through separation that we can experience the oneness that we all seek or have forgotten?

Well, I guess each of us has our own lessons to learn from every little thing that we experience. This has also been one of the learnings for me today.

To see what we don't want to see....

We were just leaving to go home, after spending the whole day at my parents' place with my sister and little nephews. Raghav was packing all his stuff into his bags. My little nephew was trying to help him, and picked up Raghav's new Lego creation - a train that he had just finished building over two days. As he was carrying and moving it to the bag, it fell from his hand and parts of it came off. Raghav screamed - his eyes closed tight, his hands fisted, his teeth grit hard, his whole body taut with anger. My little nephew looked a bit rattled and upset as he clung to my father, hugging him tight while sitting on his lap. He didn't budge from there for the rest of the time that we were there.

Soon, there were more screams from Raghav (when Raghav screams, he really SCREAMS!!) as he picked up the pieces and figured out that one piece was actually broken. Six adults (each with their own thoughts), one bewildered little baby, one kid who was like a mini volcano erupting, and another little kid who seemed confused and upset.

Raghav ran away screaming into another room. I went with him. For the first time I think, Raghav allowed me to go near him and hold him. Usually he needs and would ask for his space (to be physically away) when he was going through some strong emotions. I held him and asked if he was feeling angry. "I am really really very angry!!!....with A!!", he screamed, bursting into tears. "That piece is broken.....it cannot be fixed! he should not hold it that way...he must carry it with two hands!", he cried.

I understood how he felt. This was a new set that we had got him for Christmas, after many many months. Both my nephew and Raghav had sat down to build with their new sets today. Raghav was heartbroken that the set he had wanted for so long, what he had waited to get and build for so long, was broken. It was a little piece that was broken. But it was not only a little piece.

My husband and I sat down to try and figure out with Raghav as to which piece had broken. Everyone else was around watching us.
My mother added: " What do you get out of screaming? Is it going to get fixed?"
Raghav replied vehemently, screaming even more:"I can't help it! I am angry!"
And I added quietly: "He is very angry and so wants to scream."

My husband picked up the train and examined it. Raghav showed him where it had broken. We realised that it could not be fixed, nor could it be stuck with strong glue, as that part would then become immobile. But the train could still move on tracks. My husband showed that to him. We suggested that he could remember to carry that part separately in his hand, every time he was carrying the train, so that it would not fall off again. Raghav agreed. He then tried to fix the other parts that had come off. But they weren't fixing properly as he was already very irritated. We heard a few more screams as he tried to fix them again and again. My husband suggested that he put everything in the bag as they were and go home and try and fix them, as he would be in a better space - calmer and less angry. "No, I won't be calmer!", Raghav screamed.

All he was looking for was for us to stay with him and his anger in that moment. He was not asking for it to be fixed or wished away. "I am very angry. Can you all just listen to that and accept that? Can you stop telling me how to make it go away?" Those were his words without words. I am not sure how many of us really 'listened' to that.

I looked at my nephew. I wanted to hug them both. But realised that both were not in a space to receive that. I asked him if he was trying to help Raghav, when he carried the train. He nodded and said yes. I turned to Raghav and shared with him how A was trying to help him, but that it probably slipped from his hand and fell. "That's not the way he should carry it", said Raghav. "I know, but A didn't know that," I added. And we left it at that.

Soon enough, he finished fixing the parts that he had been trying to fix through his anger, and was ready to leave. I went over to my little nephew, rubbed his back gently and whispered to him that Raghav was now very angry, but that he would probably be okay tomorrow. I told him we would meet tomorrow and we said our byes to leave to go home. My husband whispered to Raghav, asking if he would like to go and give A a hug and say something to him. Raghav shook his head vehemently, refusing to do that. We said bye to everyone and left quietly.

Later that night, just before getting ready to sleep, I asked Raghav how he was feeling.
"I feel better now. I am not angry," he said with a little smile.
I told him how I had spoken to my sister and that they were planning to come over to our place tomorrow.
"Ok....oh, then I have to remember to give those two red Lego pieces to A....his set doesn't have them, or he has lost them....I want to give two of mine to him, so he can finish off that car tomorrow. I have to help him finish that", he said. We both smiled, hugged each other and went to sleep.

So much had transpired in that little time. There was so much to learn for all of us. It wasn't about the children. It wasn't about what had happened. It was about a lot of other things....things to do with each of us and how we look at ourselves and our own thoughts and emotions. What was important to us? The process or the end? To sort things out and 'fix' them, or take things as they are, let things be and find their own levels in their own time?

This was my learning today....

Often we are so focused on the pattern we are creating or the stitches we are making, mostly focusing on trying to 'finish' the pattern or stitch, instead of watching how we are holding the cloth or needle, how we are moving it, and how it disappears into one hole and comes out through the other.

It is in these gaps between holes that the most important things happen.

Yet, we often forget this and get lost in how we can get down to 'bridging' the gap between the holes.

This is what we mostly do with all our interactions. We are often so focused on finding solutions and managing the situation, rather than staying with the emotions and our humanness. We get caught in the 'product' instead of the 'process'.

A knitter only appears to be knitting yarn. 

Also being knitted are winks, mischief, sighs, 

fragrant possibilities, wild dreams. 

~Dr. SunWolf

I also want to add here, the lovely piece about ANGER, written by the poet David Whyte. I feel that it is quite a misunderstood emotion and one that is often wished away by most people.....

ANGER

is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for. What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence when it reaches the lost surface of our mind or our body’s incapacity to hold it, or the limits of our understanding. What we name as anger is actually only the incoherent physical incapacity to sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life; the unwillingness to be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being.

What we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our own inner powerlessness, a powerlessness connected to such a profound sense of rawness and care that it can find no proper outer body or identity or voice, or way of life to hold it. What we call anger is often simply the unwillingness to live the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing, in the face of our love for a wife, in the depth of our caring for a son, in our wanting the best, in the face of simply being alive and loving those with whom we live.

Our anger breaks to the surface most often through our feeling there is something profoundly wrong with this powerlessness and vulnerability; anger too often finds its voice strangely, through our incoherence and through our inability to speak, but anger in its pure state is the measure of the way we are implicated in the world and made vulnerable through love in all its specifics: a daughter, a house, a family, an enterprise, a land or a colleague. 

Anger turns to violence and violent speech when the mind refuses to countenance the vulnerability of the body in its love for all these outer things - we are often abused or have been abused by those who love us but have no vehicle to carry its understanding, who have no outer emblems of their inner care or even their own wanting to be wanted. Lacking any outer vehicle for the expression of this inner rawness they are simply overwhelmed by the elemental nature of love’s vulnerability. In their helplessness they turn their violence on the very people who are the outer representation of this inner lack of control.

But anger truly felt at its center is the essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here, it is a quality to be followed to its source, to be prized, to be tended, and an invitation to finding a way to bring that source fully into the world through making the mind clearer and more generous, the heart more compassionate and the body larger and strong enough to hold it. What we call anger on the surface only serves to define its true underlying quality by being a complete and absolute mirror-opposite of its true internal essence.

©2014 David Whyte
Excerpted from ‘ANGER’ From CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

Readiness, Chores, Unschooling and More....

I have come to realise now that many of the things that come up in my life today have their roots way back in my childhood and early adulthood. The way I see most of the things that I believe in today go back to my first experiences with them. I understand a little more now how those experiences were necessary and inherent to the life I was going to live, even though I had no clue about them then. I can only connect the dots backwards, never forwards.

Over the last few weeks, I have been watching Raghav slowly start to do things around the house on his own, without us asking him. It has been many many years since I stopped asking him to help with things around the house. This new milestone has been a pleasant surprise for me and has given me so much joy! There is a specialness to this joy because I can sense the joy he feels in doing these things now. He has been putting his things away after playing, wants to cut vegetables and cook his own meal, helps me with putting vegetables away, carries shopping bags, chooses his clothes to wear, puts away clothes in his cupboard, and so many other little things.

From being nervous about making him 'independent', to being a  lackadaisical mother, this has been a huge learning curve for me like with many other areas. Raghav's interest in doing things around the house waned with the imposed explorations (as part of his 'home-work') that came from school. He stopped showing any interest in any of this. A child who would earlier enjoy shelling peas, filling bottles of water, putting clothespins on clothes, and so on, simply stopped participating in any of that. And soon, I was struck with fear. Fear of how to make him 'finish' his homework, which was often activities of this sort, fear of whether he would detest chores around the house, fear of whether he would ever be independent in these things and a fear of what people would say about all this. Would they say that I was spoiling him or making him lazy? What would he do if and when he got married? (Ah yes! These silly fears don't spare anyone :) do they?) Yes, I went through it all. From desperation, to anger to irritation to pleading with him, I tried it all! Every avenue to make him independent.

But there was nothing I could do about it, no change I could effect in him, except to face my fears. Because my son would not budge. Nothing would make him budge. He would just plain and simply refuse. And that was it. He was someone who couldn't care a hoot about any form of reward or pleasure, and so it was quite impossible to bribe him with anything too. Today, I shudder to think that we tried so many of those covert tactics just to get him to do these few things that were just simply rooted in our own fears. I shudder because I can feel and understand the pain of that helplessness and the narrow mindedness that I had to go through to get here - where I am today. But I did not know any better then. I was like the fallow soil, soaked with toxins leached from previous harvests, that could not nurture any seed in it now....until it was revived and regenerated to be fit to hold fresh new life in it.

All I could do was surrender to him and life and trust that this too would be taken care of in the best possible way for him and us.

Learning life skills related to things to be done in and around the house, was an important part of my growing up too. But it was largely out of choice than out of compulsion. The compulsion was again rooted in fear - perhaps my mother's fear of what people would say, and what we as girls would do if we did not know some basics. I remember being told off time and again about clearing up after dinner - something which my sister and I fought tooth and nail about, and something which bugs me even today :) Funny how these little things stick in our heads like glue.

While we were growing up, it was my grandmother who spent a lot of time with us, more than my mother, and she is largely responsible for making me find joy in doing some of the chores around the house - that joy has stuck with me till today. Perhaps I found joy because she never forced us to do anything. She would just do it all with devotion and sincerity, while we watched. And sometimes I too would join in whenever I felt like. We grew up always having house-help or someone who would do the odd jobs around the house, as my mother also worked full time. And yet,those moments when I did some of those things myself, gave me immense joy! I remember running to sit and watch and try my hand at grinding dosa batter, the traditional way, on the grinding stone; I remember rushing behind water lorries across the street, with buckets and pots and pans to fill water in the smallest of containers, often leaving a stream of water behind me :); I remember learning how to cook from my grandmother, when my mother was away on a trip somewhere - she would teach us to make dosas of different shapes - something which I did happily for Raghav too, besides learning how to make other dishes. It was all good fun as the intent came from within! And that perhaps made all the difference.

As a young special educator, I was 'trained' to see the importance of children (especially kids with special needs) learning to do chores around the house. They were an integral part of their individualized curriculum.Of course, they had to be independent and become contributing members of the society. They had to give back. It was (if I think back now) also a way of managing the fear of parents - the real fear of what will happen to their kids if they die? There is nothing wrong or right about that fear. But I feel that often we do not pause enough to sit with those fears....we brush them aside too quickly....we want to find a solution immediately to make it all work; to make it all okay...and very often, we are so afraid of the fear itself, that we hide behind the sweet cliches that we are made to love so much....'that we need to be independent', 'that we need to contribute to the society', 'that giving back in this way makes us feel good about ourselves' and so on....Again, all these are perfectly fine....but why make them into yardsticks and milestones to be achieved by a particular time frame?....Are we too scared and too impatient to wait for these to emerge on their own? Do we give the kids a choice in these matters? Choice - not as a means to rebel, but as a means to find joy in what they do.

I can talk like this now, but back then, I too fell into the trap set up by all these cliches. Some kids in my class enjoyed working on these things, while some didn't. And we often fell into yet another trap of 'trying to make it more exciting for them' just so they would be 'motivated' to try and learn some of those, as best as they could. Yet, there were also some adults with disabilities who rebelled and chose to seek help from able-bodied friends because they did not like doing some things on their own and causing a mess. The mess was harder to handle I guess than the issue of independence. And I am thankful today to have met souls like that....who put everything in perspective for me.

To contribute or not, to be independent or not, is a choice that rests with the individual. Can we be inclusive enough to see it that way? 

I wasn't. Not with my son. I still fell into those old patterns of fears and traps. But I am grateful that Life showed me the way. Quite early in our unschooling journey, I stumbled upon Pam Laricchia's lovely blog - Living Joyfully. She and her writings about unschooling have been a great source of inspiration to me. It opened me up to new possibilities and choices, new ways of seeing and doing and being with my son, especially when it came to chores around the house. From a mother who was obsessed about 'cleaning up' toys and other stuff, I learned to let his things be. I learned to see what I saw as a 'mess' was his 'creation' and 'learning space'. I learned to see that things flowed into each other, and so something that was started today, could flow into tomorrow, rest for a while and continue after many days. I learned to respect that way of learning and being. And so we left his things as they were, until he was okay about them being cleaned up.

Often our dining table would be converted into a race track for his cars; there would be Lego structures all over the floor and house, train tracks would form mazes under furniture, and unfinished projects stacked up some place. I learned to separate my need to 'clean up' from his need to 'let things be'. Over a period of time, we understood each others' needs. He understood why I needed to put some things away, how my mind needed that order to function, while I understood his need to not clean up and how he learned. Sometimes, he would on his own make 'cleaning up' a game and use his construction vehicles to pick up things and drop them in their respective boxes. But most times, when he was okay for things to be put away, he wouldn't want to help or do it himself. He would ask me to do it. Sometimes I did it grudgingly, sometimes shouted at him for not helping me, out of tiredness, and sometimes just happily did it all myself.

Yes. We are all perfect with our imperfections. I realised soon though that it was my need to put things away and not his. He didn't see why he needed to do that. And reading what Pam wrote, helped me see that ....it helped me give him the space to be himself....it helped me trust my child and the ways of Life, knowing that he would learn what he needed to, when he was ready or willing. I am so glad that I was able to give him that space, although it came after the painful explorations of being utterly human.

I also realised that my wanting him to learn to cook and take care of some of these chores, was also rooted in gender issues. I had these strong beliefs that men needed to know how to take care of themselves; that they should not depend on women; that doing things around the house was everyone's job. I had a huge grudge against my husband's lack of interest in helping around the house, his inability to cook a simple meal for me when I was tired or sick or just like that even, and was hell bent on making sure that I brought up my son differently. And the antics I resorted to for that! Now I can laugh over it; but back then I was the incorrigible, ungrateful, nagging wife and mother. I had this weird logic (because of my past conditioning that that was the way) that if my son watched us do things around the house together, and if we were 'role models', he would automatically develop an interest in these.

And so I wanted my husband to get out of being one gender stereotype, to get into being a human stereotype! :) I goaded him to do more stuff than he already was doing around the house; I cribbed about his not being able to cook even a simple meal for me, about not 'helping' me enough with the jobs and so on. It didn't get me anywhere. My son chose to be blind and deaf to all my weird antics, and wisely so :)

And I came to my senses. I finally realised that I was falling into the same trap of 'making something that was not exciting for him, more exciting'. I was trying to control reality instead of trying to understand what reality was, and what lens I was putting on to see it. That was an eye-opening and a mind-opening moment for me. It was not about 'letting go' of something that I was holding on to, but rather a new way of 'seeing' what I was doing. A seeing which set me free, and which in turn set my son free.

Life was so much different after that. My husband started doing things more out of his own volition and not because I was telling him so. And I began to trust my son and life in different ways. It has helped immensely. When you are pushed out of your comfort zone is when you begin to truly live. And my son has a way of doing that to me time and again. I am grateful for that push, that nudge to the edge, where I have found myself over and over again.

There have been many times when well-meaning friends and family have asked me why I do so much for my son, and why he doesn't do so much....'he is always on the iPad, he is not interested in anything else', 'he is grown up now, he can help you more, help himself'....or 'don't you think he will feel good about himself if he contributes in some way to the family?', and I have often been silent, with no or few words coming out to explain myself, or smiled and said that it would happen in its own time. I am glad I trusted my heart and my son. Nothing else matters really. I guess it is good to have blinders on sometimes :)

I am glad that I waited without waiting. I am glad that I sat with my fears as they came up. I am glad I did what I did...and happy with the journey that life has carved out especially for me. That exquisite sculpting has been Life's gift to me. Today, when I see my son put aside his iPad on his own and jump up to come and cook with me in the kitchen or do things around the house, or even get out of the house without it, to help me with my veggie shopping, I know that the soil is now more than ready now and rich to nurture the seed.

Today I can cherish the gift of technology that has made my son understand what it means to be 'obsessed', what it means to be 'bored', what it means to be 'enthused', and what he can do or not do about these, without killing the seed or 'genetically modifying' it to suit and grow in my ideas of reality.

Today, I know that 'excitement' is not something that can be controlled from without, but that it emerges from within. Today I know that my son is as excited about playing with his iPad as much as he is with cooking or Mine Craft or Lego or astronomy or being alone, and that one is not better or worse than the other. Different things excite or bore people at different times, and so the 'thing' is not the cause of the excitement or boredom that one feels. Rather, it is what emerges in the timing and the space that is in the interaction between things.

And that makes me see 'readiness' in a whole new way! When we usually speak of readiness, we think of it as something that comes from within in its own time. So we usually think of a seed being ready to burst open and grow into a seedling, or we speak of the soil being ready to nourish the seed....so we think of 'readiness' as a change that happens within something. But what is a seed without the soil? What is the soil without the seed? Can one be 'ready' without the other? Readiness then is what emerges in the space that exists in the interaction between two beings or entities. The change therefore does not happen within, it happens in the space created by the interaction.

Parenting to me is not about preparation anymore. It is not about preparing the seed or the soil for life. It is about opening up to the space in between.....the interaction, that is life. The preparation and readiness emerges from that sacred space.

So what can you do to get ready the space that you find yourself in today? :)

Raghav cooking from Priya Desikan