Words and their meanings

Last night we were driving back home after having dinner at a restaurant. My parents (Raghav's grandparents) were with us. We were at a roundabout, when all of a sudden, a man on a motorbike, sped in from the right, overtook us pretty close, and weaved in and out of the traffic in front of us, almost doing a little dance, while revving up his engine. We all held our breath watching the way he drove. "Why would he do something like that?!" exclaimed Raghav. My tired self mumbled: " He must be showing off his new bike"....and I knew even though I was half asleep, that I had done myself in. :) ... I should have known better - that I cannot get away with words, with Raghav around!

"What does that mean? What do you mean by showing off?", he asked innocently. I was flummoxed. I couldn't find the words to explain to him. He insisted that I explain. I asked my father to bail me out, and he explained it so beautifully, with a little story, without using the word "showing off" at all! Then, we thought of a few more examples together, about instances when we felt somebody was showing off, including Raghav!

"So then, showing off means you are actually comparing yourself to someone else no?", he said, in a very matter-of-fact manner. :) Who would have thought that showing off  is actually reflecting something deeper? Perhaps the need to show off stems from not feeling okay about oneself, and hence the need to seek attention and recognition, and comparing oneself to another to feel better about it. I was stumped by the depth of his understanding!

I have grown up in a system where the usual thing to do when one is stuck with the meaning of a word is to look up a dictionary. I realised today that there are other ways to learn the meanings of words - that life gives you real ways to understand some meanings, if only you see those with an open, non-judgmental mind...a mind that is free from scripts....a mind that is like a clean slate, that creates its own strokes and connections.

Words

Lying down in the car, feeling sick because of some smell that we could not figure out, Raghav's mind still did not stop what it so loves to do - think, imagine and wonder!

The person driving our car got a mouthful from another car driver, was honked at and shown fingers, while we were making our way through the traffic in Madurai. Everyone in the car was discussing about how if our car had a Tamil Nadu registration (it has a Karnataka one now!), we would be given more respect and not be treated like outsiders.

Raghav listened to all that and asked :"Amma, who is an outsider?"
It was only as I began thinking about ways of telling him the meaning of that word, that I realised what a profound question it  actually was. As I was gathering my thoughts and words, my husband attempted to answer the question by drawing a comparison to family and how people who are outside of  or don't belong to that group are called 'outsiders'. I then added what I felt - that it was all in the minds of the people in the group - what they thought of the others, as to whether the others were outsiders or not. And as I was saying all that, I realised this - that the words that we use, often make up our thoughts and beliefs.

Raghav was lost in thought. I guess he still could not see the point of using a word like "outsider".
"But then, why would someone look at or think of you as an outsider, when cars are built and meant for traveling from one place to another?", he asked. Good question.

For the rest of the time in the car, Raghav pondered over this and asked us more questions -
"Who owns the earth?" was the starting point.....and that led to others like "Who owns the planets, the sun?", and so on. He answered most on his own too, saying that we were living on the earth, which is a part of the sun's family, and that the sun was a part of the Milky Way's family and that was a part of the Universe's family. All discussions like this one often end in only one word in Raghav's dictionary - "The Universe"!

But I like the way he always puts things in perspective for himself and for me. I like the way many or most of our conversations like this one involve looking at ourselves as part of the bigger picture. I like the way he builds a world that is free from beliefs and thoughts tied to words like these. I love these unexpected discussions that open up, often like Jack-in-the-boxes, to hit home a forgotten truth.

So where do we belong really?
Are we outsiders at any point in our lives?
Why do we feel that we are outsiders anyway?
What do we own?

Those are just a few of the many soul-searching questions that we touched upon here. I am sure there will be many more! And I will wait for them to spring up, wake me up and shake me up, in their own time :)

DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Challenge

We were taking out the DIY Science kits that we had bought at the Science festival that we had gone to recently and were opening them to try and build a model today. Raghav was excited about building his own working model of a windmill with a real motor et al. However,  his excitement was short lived when he found out that there were no instruction booklets in any of the boxes.

"They must have forgotten to pack them in the boxes!" was his first remark.

"How will we build it then?", he exclaimed, and then came up with this:

"Ah! I know...that is why there are no instructions...because it is called Do-it-yourself!"

"...and see...it also says challenge on the box" (Motor Motion Challenge was the name of one of the kits)...."So that is why there are no instructions....we have to figure it all out ourselves!", he
said :)

I now wish I had not told him that we could Google the name of the website given on the box  and find the instructions there....Ah! And yes, life sure would be so much more exciting and challenging without a dictionary :)