Glass Houses

Really, why do choices of certain people, make you stop in your tracks and leave you dumbfounded? Sure, it is easier to throw stones when living in a glass house myself, but let me do it anyway.

Example 1. The nephew has made incredible progress in the last 3 months, after being put in a pre-school. He talks more, he is more imaginative (plays pretend to different scenarios), more creative (mashing up songs, making up stories, etc) and is better able to understand and reason out than he used to. It would have been a shame to not send him to school till he was 5 years old (currently he is 3.5 years old), as his father wanted to. Schooling is not just about academic content, which will be forgotten soon, it is more about gaining the softer skills like creativity, reasoning and interpersonal skills, which goes a longer way in shaping what he will become. Why does he not realise that the development made in a pre-school setting cannot be duplicated at home? Why does he not understand that exposure to society, outside the confines of home/family are important for character development? Why does he not want his son to be equipped with as many skills necessary to survive in this world? Is it because he does not reason out the way I just did? Or does he not believe in the current education system?

Example 2. A colleague at work talks to me about her 11-year old daughter very much, even though to be honest, I'm not too interested in the details all the time. But I am happy to lend a listening ear. This colleague of mine is a single mother, who recently got a promotion to the post of Account Manager and raises her only daughter. She tells me her daughter is very intelligent, evident from the extremely good marks on her report card. However, she also tells me the daughter is not so much interested in spending too much time studying because she is over-confident in her abilities. Fair enough. The mother however, has different plans for the daughter; to marry her off to a man when she reaches her 20th year. Therefore she says, it does not matter if the daughter does or does not do well in school. I find it ironic that this is the decision of a mother, whose education helped her rise to where she is and made it possible to provide well for her daughter without the dependency on her ex-husband, who is entirely out of the picture. Imagine the fate of a woman in today's society, without a proper education/career/finances (I don't wish it apon anyone) if her huband left her with a child. I do hope that this is not something about taking out the dissatisfaction of her unfulfilled dreams of a happy marriage on her only daughter. Like my parents, I would have dealt with this in a different perspective. In identifying and knowing the child's strengths, I would have encouraged her to do well and dream big, in hopes she will stand a fair chance of leading a self-sufficient and comfortable life in society.

Once, many years ago, a rendition of this piece was performed by our campus orchestra and it has stuck with me since. Here's the original, a truly wonderful piece of Indian classical music, sung by a equally talented musician. Stepping for a moment out of cultural differences, this piece carries plenty of deeper meanings and timely reminders for most of us who spend our time aimlesslessly and selfishly.