Thoughts I've thunk while sippin' at a cup of tea and reading something provoking, often get dropped here for the benefit of humanity and my own hubris.
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An article in this issue of Tricycle (Spring 2002) brought up two wonderful thoughts. The first one, I have already mentioned earlier. This second one has dropped me into a cup of thoughts ...
My current religious thinking is not appropriate for children. I want to tackle the complexities and mystery of life, both the importance and irrelevance of the world, and the truths and paradoxes in my head. But the world I want to build around my child is a world of absolutes, of safety, of certainty. A world without fear ...
To quote the author, Neil Gordon:
With our children, however, we present a morality as banal as the bland blue sky. And while, thanks to my children, I am appreciating the fagility of the present, I am required to build around them a world in which the very opposite is true, a world of soidity, of surety, of safety. A world in which identity is fixed and death is an abstraction. A world, in other words, in which they can be, for just the first dozen years of their lives, free from fear.p.108
The author's answer to how we resolve the world of our persception and the world we present to our children is obvious, but too often unstated:
What we do is, we lie. We conceal the basic truths of life from our children--the insatiability of desire, the radical truth of impermanence, the noble truth of the ubiquity of suffering... we lie to them, and we leave the truth for later on.
But clearly this lying is important. From keeping the magic of Santa Claus alive for as long as we can, or comforting with the words, "Yes, all good goldfish go to heaven." It is part of building up the children before the testing that life will dish out.
My sister, on the other hand, wants to make sure that her children believe her later in life, and so she doesn't go out of her way to keep Santa visiting her house. I guess I just assume that my children will undoubtedly question my authority and my knowledge, and thereby start to question society's answers as well. Isn't that part of growing up? And isn't the struggle that I face right now just another phase of growing up?
© 2002-2005, Howard Abrams • Except where otherwise noted, all original content is licensed under a Creative Commons License (see details).
| Excerpt: | Now that my daughter is two, she is really getting into Christmas, and I'm really fostering her appreciation of magic. |
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| Tracked: | December 21, 2003 10:51 PM |
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