kgashok

I read this in a newspaper entry and made me write this down as a goal:

‘I only want to enjoy my childhood, ma’

(Dear co-parents, some of us might hear a small, fading voice making yet another attempt to reach us)

Inumella Sesikala

Amma, I don’t want to go to school.

I am just a child, Ma. I want someone to tell me stories and teach me. I want to watch tadpoles and butterflies and know what they eat, where they sleep. I want to climb a hill and catch a cloud to see what it is made of.

I want to wait with my hands in the stream and feel the fish swimming.

I want to run with the puppies, sing with the birds, and play with paper-boats in the rain.

I want to lie down on the soft green grass and hear the wind whisper.

Only then I want to learn more about them from the printed word.

Only after my imagination is fired, my thirst to know more has begun, a seed of ‘Why?’ is planted in my brain.

Amma, I feel trapped in the prison-like classroom. I feel my spirit slowly weakening with the monotonous teaching. Often, when I ask a basic question our teachers say, “No time for all that. Let us finish the syllabus.”

I get tired of studying just for marks without pausing to truly understand.

I want to go to the museum with my classmates and hear my teacher explain the stories of the artefacts.

I want plenty of nature trips where real Biology classes would be held.

I want to see colourful videos of volcanic eruptions and deep-sea dwellings.

I want our whole school to visit together the historic and cultural places in my city.

I want to learn astronomy after looking through a telescope once.

I don’t want to just read them in my textbooks; I want to see, hear, touch, smell and taste whatever I can. I want to experience.

Why can’t the school make at least one such trip every year?

And, I cannot stoop down anymore to carry my school sack. My back is ready to break. Why should I carry all the books everyday? Why can’t we have only two subjects per day? Or, why don’t we have lockers like in the Western schools? And, why should I squeeze in that over-crowded auto?

But, Amma, growing up no longer seems to be fun. I see only more of homework, winter projects, summer classes, weekly tests, monthly tests, quarterly, half-yearly and annual exams, external competitive exams, more tests, more competitions, more pressure, more stress…

When can I sing, paint, dance, swim, or cycle?

When I can just play cricket or even hide-and-seek?

What happened to that minimum sleep that you always say a child needs?

Why should I always study, study?

Amma, I am scared of increasing atrocities by untrustworthy teachers, ragging-raving seniors, acid-loving nuts, perverted adults…

Ma, right now, I don’t want to be a doctor, engineer or anything else.

I just want to feel safe and secure, play and learn without any stress before I become an adult like you.

I only want to enjoy my childhood, Ma.

© Copyright 2000 – 2009 The Hindu

Our bodies are in permanent reincarnation state – according to Science author, TOR NØRRETRANDERS. We are the “software” that decides what gets transferred from one atom to another.

Therefore, if we want to improve our quality of life, we must improve the “software” that we have within us. How to do this?
Eckhart Tolle might have well given the answer to this.

He says that meditation helps create gaps in our consciousness stream. “Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger”.

By creating these gaps, we can incrementally improve our “software”, and therefore hope for a better life experience.

Jim Collins wrote about this in “Good to Great”

Kathy Sierra writes about this in her blog

An earlier edition of Scientific American Mind, Volume 14, number 1, has an article on Television Addiction that I wish everyone on the planet would read. You can still be in charge and have television, but it’s extremely difficult. Personally, I didn’t feel up to the challenge, and it wasn’t worth what it does to your brain and body, so I dumped mine (as did the others here). If you haven’t tried it, it’s like 1,000 pounds of stress and weight being lifted off your shoulders. You’ll most likely lose weight, and more importantly—you’ll more likely read more, get more done, spend more time with other hobbies and, oh yeah, have more sex. : )

http://www.sciam.com/special/toc.cfm?issueid=17&sc=rt_nav_list