The other day, I was going through a parenting moment with my second born. This child has an over active imagination and a tendency to improvise on things every time she narrates an incident to me.
For instance, if Mr. Price, her second grade teacher and her had a conversation in the corridor, it would add up in content every time she chooses to repeat it. And she chooses to repeat it at least three times in one go...so you know how the script expands as it gets repeated. I, for the bad cop that I am, keep interrogating her without calling her out, ever so gently bringing the focus onto the details she stacks up on the convo - kind of making her question / correct herself without killing her spirit and her rich imagination.
The other day we had a discussion. About speaking the truth. I was trying to tell without telling, preach without preaching that there's a fine line between imagination and fibbing. Between improvisation and manipulation. But it was a slippery slope, a conversation that was punctuated with a lot of thoughtful pauses and childish questions. Now the subject matter 'truth' seemed to seep all over, creating a lot of ambiguity.
So why is important to tell the truth? I asked her - after telling her stories that demonstrated the importance of being truthful. No one would believe us if we are caught telling lies too many times - she seemed to get to the core of the issue. Just when I thought my mission was accomplished, I realized that there's some fine font happening here. Speaking the truth has layers to it. That not speaking the truth is not always a bad thing, and in some contexts, it is perhaps very necessary.
What if we would hurt someone's feelings if we speak the truth? - I brought in an example of when I said that a painting someone made was fantastic when I thought otherwise. If there's no harm caused but good done when we lie, so to speak, it is okay! I concluded.
The 8 yr old looked like she got it and got about her routine. But I felt like something was incomplete in this conversation, the conversation in my mind space went through things that might go above and beyond telling the truth - I felt the need to tell her more, to tell her in detail that life isn't black and white and everything seems to shift based on the situation. But I wanted to spare her tender self from cryptic philosophies...Life would get to the teachings, slowly but surely. Right?
This morning, when I was walking home with my neighbor - this pleasant lady that doesn't seem to have bad days or bad hair days, our conversation treaded the topic of separation anxiety. It's a fresh school year and we saw kindergarten kids being dropped at the gates where longing stares are exchanged between them and the parents.
"I saw a kid cry the other day" - I told her. A sight that isn't very common in the part of the world I live in. I could be dated, but when I remember my school days in India, I remember tantrums and separation anxieties spilling all over the place and kids that cried to no end when they were dropped off at the school gate. Like I said, I could be dated.
"Oh here?" she seemed to be as surprised as I was when I spotted the incident. "May be the kid didn't go to pre-k" I analyzed. "Could be" she offered.
Then She spoke about her own experience with a kid crying at the gate - the kid being a common friend's carpool mate that had a similar melt down when being dropped. The friend that came to drop him was clueless as the kid broke into a full blown sob fest at the entrance. The new rules forbid parents from walking into the campus at drop off. "I scooped the kid on to my hip and walked in to drop him at his class, waited till the teacher arrived and made sure some grown up was around to handle him" She shared animatedly "For that moment I didn't think it was necessary to follow the rules. It is a little kid's anxiety in question and I didn't want him to feel abandoned"
I had a smile on my face. We are taught to follow rules, to speak the truth. But are we encouraged to speak our truth? The things that we see, we feel and we deem as important? Do we stand up for what we believe in and put our foot down and become rebels when the situation nudges us or do we confine ourselves to the rule books?
I remember watching a reel on the Gram - a reel from a famous Bollywood film where a paraplegic goes into a monologue urging all and sundry to break the rules, kiss slowly and live fully as life is short and unpredictable. At that moment, I had a flash of a thought that kind of deciphered the 'breaking the rules' part as an act of abandon, an act of artistic liberties...
But I think this is what it could have meant - Break the rules cause rules aren't always the roads that lead us to truth. And bend the truth cause the what is true need not be right.
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