Let’s learn from baby! Things to learn from Babies.

Before you judge me, this post is not about any Thirukural. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you.

Ever since I translated this Kural, I was thinking to pen down about things to learn from baby. This post is about inbuilt qualities that I observed from Aarav (Son) and I wish to implement those in my lifestyle. As a parent, I should teach and nurture my son to adapt to this external world. But while doing so, I noticed many things to learn from him before I actually corrupt (You read it right) him. Thanks to Pandemic for giving me precious timeframe to be in home, to be with family totally locked up, to do things which I never dreamt of and I will dedicate an individual post for thanking 2020. Strange isn’t? Thanking 2020! Don’t curse me, I blame 2020. It’s totally a strange year for all. So hop in for learning.

Fresh Day:

Every day is a fresh day for Aarav. The moment he wakes up from slumber, he lights up the world without any worries, regrets, deadlines and predetermined thoughts. He doesn’t understand weekdays, weekends and holidays. It is unnecessary to learn the difference as he sees each day as fresh day. With this open mind, he starts the day brightly to have fun. He is having fun while playing, learning, exploring, eating and talking. He does everything for fun.

Are we embracing each day as fresh? We easily reach the peak dopamine in all our work. Be it cooking, office work, parenting, studying and daily chores. We are tired of doing routine work again and again over the period of time. We lack the ability to see newness in those daily activities rather we do it under compulsion for money, society and illogical norms. That’s why wise advise us to start the day with exercise/ Yoga to keep our mind fresh and blank. But we set target in exercise too using stupid apps and add more stress. We do things copying others blindly or fall for consumerism whereas Kids do just to please themselves.  

The Boss Baby:

Babies, do as they please, be happy in their own little beautiful world, carefree attitude, shameless to cry to get the job done, clever to seek the attention, eager to learn new things, fearless to face the challenge, daring to attempt after failure, eat when they hungry, sleep when they tired and forgive when others hurt them.

Can we see any sorts of negativity or stupidity here? That’s the hallmark of babies. They are so liberal in their philosophy. It’s we who influence them through flawed religious, social and philosophical views. I strongly believe that if anyone does wrong deed then it’s their parent’s fault. Because babies can’t be wrong, they are only guided wrong.

Happy world:

Babies do things just to be happy, as simple as that and they find happiness in all silly things. Recently Aarav found his peak happiness when I bought him 1 Rupee Balloon, allowed him to play in mud, gave him broken chalk piece to scribble on wall and allowed to drench while drizzling. Silly for me but he found happiness in those silly things. Priceless (Price Less) isn’t it?

On contrary, we adult buy them costly toys when they have ability to find happiness in all things. Give them comfort like AC rooms when they don’t complain sleeping without it. Put them in international school and pressurize them through online class when they have ability to learn on their own. Recently I got to know that schools which are not conducting online classes are termed as useless. We are giving them comfort, ruining their natural ability, corrupt them with our desire for fake status and later whine about their behaviour.

Compassionate:

As I said, Aarav starts the day fresh without any regrets or stress. He forgives me immediately whenever I scold or hit him. So cruel isn’t it? Yes, He struggles because of my impatience, arrogance and ignorance. At times I lose my temper when he does things against my will and I apply supremacy to supper his liberal views. Yet, he forgives within a minute and rush to me without any ego to appease me. He took the hit, forgave and appeased me without any fault on his side.

Can you find any adult in this world with this quality? Let me know if you know one. May be we should use time machine to visit Buddha to see this trait. Babies are the epitome of compassion. They not only forgive us but also live with us without any regret.

Calculative:

Aarav is extremely choosy when comes to share his love. He won’t mingle with strangers readily rather take his own sweet time to analyse them with his capacity and build rapport with them if he wants. People call him introvert, but I see him as calculative.

It’s okay to have wait game rather to share our precious time & energy with undeserved. We adult usually do this without any second thoughts and later crib about betrayal or whine about disappointment when we fail to receive love from other side.

Innocence:

Whenever he farts, I never missed the chance to ask him, who did it? Aarav with pride face, He admits with the big smile ‘Aaavuu’. He is yet to learn the act of lying from me. He is so pure and never bothers about fake status, dignity, class, place and time. He speaks truth innocently, no prejudice thoughts, favouritism and mainly no gossiping.

He is going to learn all these ill traits eventually from me and society in coming days. But these are root causes for all our miseries and I am daring to teach Aarav having knowing this truth. Cruel isn’t it? Hey!  Don’t blame me, I blame this flawed society. Because I am adult and I am cunning. I am Boopathi, Not Aarav.   

Parenting:

So we can conclude that all babies are pure with exceptional inbuilt characters. As we grow old, we need to add more values to these inbuilt characters rather than depreciate those. But we stopped learning, started believing random morning Whatsapp quotes, forwards, YouTube Vloggers, self-proclaimed scholars, fell for advertisement and fake lifestyle. We started lying, hiding secrets from dear ones fearing prejudice, fearing failures due to social pressure, believing unknown God without taking the chances and exploring, sacrificing health to amaze materialistic possession, taking tremendous stress for unknown future sacrificing present, keeping grudge on others due to ego and finally blaming politicians to hide our incompetency.

I started off with the note that this post is not about any Kural. Actually I lied, I am adult you see. I summarized many couplets with this post and according to me renunciation is nothing but going back to childhood. To achieve this, likes of Valluvar and Buddha advised us to renounce all desires. There is no doubt about it. But my view is why to adapt desire while growing up and renounce it later to achieve peace? Call me ‘Boopha’ and that’s my spirituality. If you read this line, I deceived you all to hear my spiritual view. Ever wonder why saints leave their family to discover self? It's because all should be in same page to achieve a common cause. So good parenting will happen only if both partners comes to a term and accept to this view whole heartedly. 

Jokes apart, Kids are born with pure positive thoughts. Good parenting is to prepare healthy atmosphere for kids to enrich their inborn traits for their betterment and for society as well. It is myth that giving them comfort, buying them costly things and enrolling them into international school is good parenting.

Conclusion:

I finish the long post with this disclaimer that I am not wise guy. It is unfortunate that I need to disclose this disclaimer every time I share my view to dodge other’s prejudice mentality. Having observing these skills from Aarav, I yet to implement these in my life. I only wish to adapt these in my life style and wanted to share it with you all so that it will be helpful for few. So let us try to allow them to learn on their own, let’s give them healthy atmosphere to explore more and leave better future for them. Thanks all for your patience and let me know your thoughts and feedbacks in comment section. Let’s learn together and build better future.