Simple Truths – Stop showing them the finger

I am not sure if this is an Indian phenomenon or just plain universal. Somehow we seem to have grown up with this ‘blame the whole world syndrome’. Nothing deters us from finding a finger to poke at someone else.  God is the usual suspect but if that does not assuage our frustrations then any and every living being can be a good substitute, to say nothing of the ridiculous compulsion to blame that which is inanimate.

Let me illustrate this with something that most Indians would identify with, if not actively participated in. Little children always fall, either because they are still discovering the joys of two feet and their ability to traverse ground they were once forced to crawl on, or they just seem to be like a yo-yo with  two feet. In any case, they are bound to fall.

Better sense has taught us to be silent to a child’s initial shock when they fall and not to contribute to it by transmitting our own fears. Gentle concern in a soft non agitated voice is more helpful than a hyper agitated adult attempting to calm a now bawling child who has inadvertently discovered that his or her pain and shock has more attention value than they first thought it had. The voice decimals are needless and pointless.

This brings me to the matter at hand (even though we are discussing feet). Now that the child has stumbled and fallen and the noise of the super agitated adult has sufficiently mixed with the distraught child, a solution to the matter at hand needs to be found. Here is where the child learns perhaps one of its first and worst ways of dealing with challenging situations.