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New Year Wish
Eight days of winter break just evaporated like seconds. Lazing in the sun with a book in my hand, meeting sisters and arguing with Dove is all now gone. With it is gone a year that was a treasure house of myriad experiences.. On the last day of the year Dove took up a chart sheet, neatly wrote her New Year resolutions and pinned it on the soft board in her room. Five new words everyday, less TV, less junk food and more study. How simple life can be, if only we never grow up.
What should be my resolution for the New Year? Or putting it in slightly different mould what should be my endeavour in this coming year? The answer lies somewhat in the following two wishes.
Give me the Midas Touch O Lord
every soul I touch turns into Gold
pure, glittering and giving.
Give me the Piper's Tune O Lord
all the souls that hear it are taken
to the threshold of their mind.
The last line a Kahlil Gibran quote is so very important. Every child is a unique individual. As a guide I would like to usher every child to the realm of innumerable possibilities that his potential holds. I know the task is uphill and terrain rugged. But try I must.
Roots and Wings
There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots; the other is wings.
Hodding CarterSurrounded by so many children I often wonder what should be our legacy to our children. What gifts we should give our children so that they lead a rich, peaceful and fulfilling life. Education and wealth are both important but more important perhaps are the roots and the wings.
Roots, those strong filaments of our beliefs and values that keep us strongly woven in the fabric of our life, are perhaps the best gifts we can bequeath to our children. The next generation need not be victim of our confusion, because we as a generation were utterly confused. We didn’t want to talk about our ‘past glories’ because the term had almost become derogatory. Depressed by rampant corruption, struggle for daily survival and social injustice we looked at external role models and were awed by the success of others. Instead of finding solutions for our peculiar problems from within we sought them from outside. As a result we find ourselves trapped in keeping up with Joneses syndrome wherein aping the success model of other countries has led us to accumulate further social strife.
It is really important that we apprise our children of our past glories. The originality the, the creativity, the discipline of our ancestors must be appreciated by our children to instill in them a sense of pride and belonging. Our children should know that the general chaos and frustrations of our daily lives do not spring from any genetic error of our race but from our failing faith in ourselves. A rooted individual has a strong sense of belonging and in times of turmoil has a strong internal support system to fall back upon. The fast changing times where everything becomes obsolete within days needs individuals that are unfettered by insecurities.
If roots are our past our depth, then wings are our future our heights. There is really no limit to where human mind can reach. Why not gift the wings of discovery, exploration , experimentation and questioning to our next generation, even though we as a generation were choked by dogmatic methods.
For once we have role models. APJ Abul Kalam, Manmohan Singh, Narayana Murthy are few such models which epitomize the rooted fliers.
Each of our children deserves a secure, solid and strong footing and a firmament full of hope and dreams.
Even if it’s a tall order lets try.