Certain periods in life become truly golden. Circumstances can pull you into a whirlpool of experiences and reflection. I have been humbled by what all is left unlearned, in the unchartered territories of mind and soul. I am still learning, but even at this moment, I do have something I can share with all.
As individuals and society, we are passing through a phase of extreme personal risk. Traditional social frameworks of protection from toddlers, to adolesence to youth are being subjected to immense challenges. I realize, very painfully so, that as a standard method of learning, there is no education system to build us emotionally stronger and be able to understand and feel these.
I personally, have been very privileged and lucky to reach a certain leadership level in my organization, that the company felt it worthwhile to take me through expensive experiential courses on self actualization, reflection, balance and EQ etc. These were all simulated conditions, but they gave extremely good insight into how mind and emotion works.
Some people are lucky to experience some of this reflective process early on in their life by even a passing adherence to techniques of things like meditation, either according to Yogic traditions, or the buddhist way. Which ever way we choose, an ability to be driven by emotions and yet be able to reflect on it is an art that comes through training. This training of mind is not so difficult. I see a huge difference in response systems of people, who have been trained to reflect and those who are not. Given that this is such a strong determinant to individual and human progress, I am apalled at the little attention it receives in social and educational context.
Many simple examples that make a difference.
If a child cries in front of you, The most typical response is, please don't cry.
Another response is,
that oh, you feel like crying. what happened. First is a self protective response (apathy to child's pain), vs. second one is empathetic. Notice, that in both we are not talking about what action we take to stop crying (like provide him what he wants), but where do we start to converse with him. This difference of response can be noticed by the child very early on and is the first essential training to segregate the desire from the pain of not achieving it.
Or take another example. A constant focus on I, my needs, my freedom, my space, is a quick reminder to the mindset of a small baby who feels it to be truly the centre of universe. While some focus on I and self is essential, if ego boundaries are not extended, it very clearly shows that the personality has not entered the phases of adulthood, which is essential to build in a capacity to nurture and care for others, and loosing the centrality of self in the process.
Experts would be able to give many more. There are so many books written around self help. People read it by bed time and sleep. There are few lucky like me, who go through experential courses. The fundamental question I have is, if unmanaged emotions are the single biggest destroyer of peace for self and society, why is it discussed so much in fairy tales and tv serials, but so little in curriculam and essential learning. To leave this to the vagaries of individual families is too risky a proposition and it needs to become a common knowledge. Why do so few people know about Jo Hari Window, or about Kolb's learning cycle. There may be matters of style, but if we can trickle even some of it, we would atleast buld a certain language of describing and communicating emotions. If we go around and ask, the differences between the words apathy, sympathy and empathy, so few people would be able to correctly differentiate. Infact, empathy is clearly confused with sympathy these days, that one needs to be very cautious when the speaker does end up using it.
Why is it all important and essential to the growing child. We are aware of the risks that surround us (internet, strangers on web, perverted minds and what not). We are also aware of constant bombardment of advertisements, desires, signboards. We are also aware of tv serials that continually dump emotionally high experiences, but no reflection. How does a child know, what is real and what is fantasy in all of this. What we learned in our child hood, just does not apply as a mechanism to manage this influence. Most of the time, our responses to the agony of child are very traditional as our response system has not been taught to handle these. We need to get into a learning phase and understand for ourselves, whether I am the originator of his/her agony, can I deal with it, or do I need professional help. This bit of an ability to distinguish is today key to growing a healthy child.
One common mistake that parents are making today is assuming that the child is maturing in thought process much earlier. This is false. The media is able to make the child act as if he is mature and is able to activate his defenses to ward off the challenge of questioning. The tricks to do this, are becoming pretty well known. I am realizing that as parents/guardians we are often bang on, to identify a trouble, but without some of the knowledge to manage it we either create a disaster by pushing our agenda too early, or under the justification of child's maturity, we go into our comfort zones. None of them is a proper response to the trouble they are in. We need to investigate deep and sincerely before we apply our prescription or seek any help in the areas of child/adolesence/adult psychology. There is this whole domain, that as average otherwise intelligent human beings, we are completely illeterate.
We need to make ourselves aware that we are imperfect to handle all this world is presenting us today. We need to consciously work on learning and training our minds to gainfully react. We need to make our children aware to deal with a lot of this. Many schools are now helping do this, but unless we agree and accept this learning of school and internalize at home, it is a bunch of contradictions staring at child's face.
Why do we need to study psychology. The common thought about psychology is that I am fine, so why should I read. But then why do I read, physics, maths, chemistry. None of them we use. Because we need to pass exam. It is pretty sad to note that we spent hours and hours reading because on fiction,love, emotions and hate, and love to spend time, watching play of emotions on KSBKBT, or MTV roadies or SKS etc, and yet we do so without even going through even a single chapter of reading on emotions. It is sad part of our education system not to do this, but sooner we realize, I think we should catch and read any such book. They are disturbing because they talk about mind and feelings. They make us feel ashamed of who we are, but then so do books on physics and maths, don't do the same, when we are not able to solve problems. Emotions are as much part of our living as much as science is. As much as we cannot drive a car, by understanding what accelerator, break and clutch is (and it is painful to learn a car), so it is living life without going through a conscious, painful focused learning on this.
Why does it pain me. Left, right and centre people love to call themselves committed on social websites. Not even realizing that these are social websites are experiments which are just about 2-3 years old, in an immensely long history of humanity. Do it, but please first read what love is (not from movies, not from fiction but books on reality of how mind works). I would recommend page 69 to 170 from the book "road less travelled". If you feel, it is heavy reading, then I must caution my dear friend, you are in for a heavier time in your lives.
The challenges you all face are very unique to the times we live in. We have not been taught this by our parents, because there lives were never at so much risk, and I also say that even they have serious difficulty managing emotions. Luckily they were given two skills of life, which we were never provided. One is discipline of mind, and second is value of sacrifice. They have lived in a world, with little emotional risk, and where ever they have faced they have leaned on these two. So while they are good at managing themselves because of faith and adherence to values of discipline and sacrifice which are a personal art, they have found it very hard to manage us. We are making serious fun of ourselves, coming in a world that is very tough and real, the moment you come out of laptops and computers without these essential skills of discipline and sacrifice, and without understanding what emotions are.
When I see some of us in pain, My worry is not as much whether you would choose this decision or that. My pain comes, whether it would be a decision based on sincerety to self, inter-relationships, care, grace and a long term happiness, not brought of hate but true love for all. And I am not talking the love you typically think. My definition of love is in page 69 to 170 of the book road less travelled.
When you have learned some of this. You would see your ego expand not at the cost of other's ego, but to include it. You would feel hurt, but would feel sorry for the person in front of you, and won't feel your own existence in question. You would be able to extend your hand of help, without loosing your own security. and so much more.
Some interesting lectures I find on topics related to thoughts here are these.