This morning, my daughter came to me all teary eyed and said, Mama, Didi says she doesn’t trust me.
To give this context, Didi is her nanny who has been a part of our family for close to 5 years. She is love personified and we trust her implicitly with our children.
Here is the conversation that ensued:
Baby Zo: Mama, Didi says she doesn’t trust me.
Mama: Is that so, but why do you think that is ? did you give a thought as to why she would say something like that ?
Baby Zo: (after few moments of reflection or so it seemed): I lied to her few times
Mama: Hmmm, ok then.
Let me tell you something today, sweet love.
A relationship between any two people is held by an imaginary rose of “love and trust”. And both people in that relationship are responsible to water the rose with “honesty and love”.
Honesty means that we do not lie and we speak the truth always.
Do you know what happens if we lie to someone who trusts us?
Baby Zo: Untrust (looking quizzically at me)
Mama: Well, pretty much except the word is “distrust”. Let me give you a simple example.
If I blindfold myself and start walking in the house and I ask you to tell me, if there is anything in my way that I need to be careful of, lest I will trip. And you, tell me that there isn’t. So I walk blindfolded with implicit faith in your word and trip on a shoe and fall.
The next time, I ask you again, if there is anything in my way that I need to be careful of, lest I will trip. And you, tell me that there isn’t. So once again, I walk blindfolded, and trip on a toy and fall.
The next time, I ask you, if there is anything in my way that I need to be careful of, lest I will trip. And you, tell me that there isn’t. I wont trust your word and will most certainly take a peek myself to be sure.
Do you know why?
Baby Zo: Because I lied the first two times.
Mama: Absolutely, my lil wonder, you are a fast learner.
Coming back to the rose of “love and trust”. If you water the rose with dishonesty or lies instead of trust or you water the rose with anger instead of love, the rose will not blossom. The leaves will start to shrivel and it will slowly wither.
And once the rose starts to wither, you will have to make double the effort to revive it and you still cant be sure if it will blossom just as well.
Now tell me, who will tell you if you haven’t watered your rose with the nourishing water of “love and trust”.
Baby Zo: I don’t know.. YOU
Mama: No, baby doll. I wont
Baby Zo: Then who, Papa
Mama: No, YOU will
Baby Zo: I will tell myself ?
Mama: Yes, you will. Every time you do or say something in anger, you may feel better for venting but after sometime, once your anger subsides - how do you feel.
Baby Zo: Bad
Mama: Well then, you have your answer. If anything you do or say, gives you a bad feeling, it means you yourself don’t agree with what you did and you must try not to do it again.
Lets try to empower our children so that they can figure the responses for themselves instead of tailor making the answers that we think they need.
Lets empower them to decipher the right from the wrong that is in sync with their inner self and not impose our sense of right and wrong on them.
Again, easier said than done. But lets start somewhere, with baby steps.
As William Wordworth said, “To begin, BEGIN”