“So I have been blessed with this teacher and guide, who decided to be born through me. My son Sanil, 8 now, has always been full of inquiries, observations, deductions and theories… Ever since I can remember and ever since he started communicating, we’ve had these long chats about world, people, emotions, life, whatnot. As much as I love delving deep into our kiddy brand philosophy, scarcity of time and other household distractions put a constraint on that. As a way of innovative solution (oh, we are so good at that!), we decided to club our evening walk with our phone-free, distraction-free, household-stuff-free discussion on anything under the sky… or beyond it (yes, we go there often). We call it Grounding-Bonding Walk as we talk while walking bare foot on grass.”
Here’s an excerpt from today’s conversation:
Our talks usually start with me asking, “So, how was your day? Tell me what did you learn today?”
“Oh… the usual….,” he shrugged and then his eyes twinkled as he came upon a realization, “I learnt a new thing today!”
Ahh, there you go, I thought, I was all excited to hear his new discovery and knew I didn’t need to prod him to spill it all out.
“I learnt that EVERYTHING CHANGES!” he said with an air of grave wisdom.
Really? And here I was, going from pillar to post in the “world of spirituality” to get sermonized on the same thing eventually and… he got it? Just like that?
“How so?” I asked.
“There was this friend’s house I always thought was the best place to go to… well, his was the best, ours was second, and then so-and-so’s was third…” he rattled off to explaining detailed rating mechanism based on carefully chosen criteria.
He is very meticulous when it comes to rating anything. Heck, he and his friends even had a contest on whose mom is the coolest a few days ago. I made it to a fabulous tie with another cool mom, who like me, doesn’t have many qualms about how exactly to raise a child. They are now considering promoting me to the coolest status as they have finally figured one un-overlook-able flaw with the other mom.
The point is, he goes off to various tangents while in the midst of a conversation (can’t imagine where he got that from! :p), so I urged him to come back to the topic.
“And today I realized that the “first” house was not so entertaining after all! I never imagined that would ever be the case. There, everything changes!” he said a little too philosophically.
“Yeah, it does,” I nodded, all proud of my knowledge worth hundreds of books and well, a number of years , “they tell us in Vipassana, everything is anitya.” Now I was in sermonizing mode.
He was all wide-eyed and exclaimed, “Everything?”
“Yes, everything.”
“What about that tree there? I don’t see it changing.”
“See it in a year… or two.”
“That building?”
“Of course.”
“How?”
“For starters, the paint is going to wear off, they may change the paint, the glass windows will become dirty…”
“Or the building will fall down or they’ll build two more floors up there!” he figured, all excited.
“Yes,” I sighed, kind of praying in my heart that they don’t build more floors, perhaps we can do with less of concrete verticals.
“Am I changing too?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Hmmm…”
“Me too, you know! Everybody is. Every moment. I am not the same person I was yesterday.”
A profound silence.
“But you know mom, change is good!” came the new discovery.
“How so?”
“Imagine somebody gave you rajma-chawal every single day to eat. Will you like it?”
“Nope!”
“Thank God, it is a new dish every day for us, in every way.”
“Yes, dear.”
Silence again.
And then I couldn’t resist this, knowing how fond he is of Science, I knew he would enjoy this, “Funnily enough, although everything changes, yet nothing changes.” Oh, how I love discovering, studying, sharing paradoxes!!
“How??”
“You know how everything is made up of molecules and atoms and then protons, neutrons, electrons etc.?”
“Oh yes!” he loves his Discovery Channel.
“So deep down… everything… EVERYTHING is the same… and unchangeable.”
“Oh WOW!! That is right!!!!!”
We both soaked in the profundity of it all for a few long moments…
And then he chirps again, “But you know mom, where were potatoes first found?”
“Ummm… no… where?”
“In the ground!” and rolls with laughter.
And so we walk back talking of potatoes, dogs, cats, stars, clouds and, of course, life…
Dinakshi
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Hmmmm….. This awakening walk a talk is really amazing …… n for these wonderful observations sanil gets the coolest kid award!!!!!
This is profound Dinakshi. Enjoyed reading every bit of it. Quite philosopher son you have.