A Note on Parenting

Source: newstalk.ie

I know you probably can’t or should not really make an observation about parenting unless you become a parent yourself, but here is one anyway. Though I am not sure if I would ever want to be a parent, but this is what I think about it as of March 31, 2013. As you can’t tell how much your views would change in the future.

Whenever I hear about parents being disappointed with what their child has turned out to be, in terms of becoming something in life, I find it rather disappointing. I can’t help but wonder if they even understand them as unique persons responsible for their own lives and the choices they make, especially when they blame themselves for their miserable condition.

And I can’t help thinking about it when they want to control their lives, especially in Eastern cultures like India. Though I am sure it is true to some extent for every culture. But for cultures like Pakistan, we have conservative parents who would raise their daughters in Britain or America, but would want them to return home as soon as they come to age in order to prevent them from having freedom of choices in their sex lives.

This is when you would be compelled to think that many parents hardly even understand what, and I hope you don’t mind my using the word “what” over here, their children are. The traditional view makes parents presume that they have some sort of a right over the child’s way of life and they end up getting depressed when it does not turn out to be like that.

I find this the greatest flaw with the conservative upbringing, not that liberal upbringing would be any better, though they would offer you a lot of arguments to support both.

I know bringing up a child is one of the most heated debates, rather a dilemma, everywhere in the world. I don’t know what is the right way to bring up a child, which is why I personally consider it a rather scary predicament that I would not want to see myself in. Scary and maybe wonderful at the same time.

A child can be one of the most dangerous weapons in the world, in many ways. If you consider that, you may never become a parent, ever.

So while people cannot agree on the best way to bring up a child, at least some parents can start with considering their children distinct individuals with personalities and preferences.

Source: Columbia Pictures (under fair use)

Death as Tooth Decay

Source: topnews.ae

Every step we take is a step towards death. We long for it.

Every little action, every biochemical reaction, every poison we take in, every word we speak and get to hear in response to it, contributes to our ultimate, impending demise.

Have you ever wondered what dying and death would feel like?

As a matter of fact, nature has given us several clues into that. In terms of consciously perceiving it.

Forget about seeing the other person die. That is simply too distant for a physical being to experience death, despite the emotional pain.

But after observing the decaying death of a couple of my own teeth, it struck me with how analogous it was to death itself.

It is, apart from the skin, one of the few organs in the human body that dies within the normal course of a human life. That is, excluding accidents and more horrendous injuries from the possibilities.

The way the root hurts and the way it is taken care of is a great example of the transition from life to death.

And surely it is the transition that must hurt the most.

As Woody Allen said, I am not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it’s happening.

Well that precisely elaborates the inescapable predicament.

Life is precious, yes, but the act of dying seems to be the very inseparable part of it.

Dying almost seems like a function of life.

And hardly any other occurrence within our bodies exemplifies it better than tooth decay and extraction.

The ultimate tension, the electric shocks, the soul wrenching pull, when the tooth is pulled out and the ultimate peace and void when it is gone.

Or a tooth can even hang between life and death, even perpetually. Or at least for a very long time.

I don’t know about it and I can’t be sure, but I can tell that it must be representative of a life condition as well.

Or perhaps it is representative of the very condition that our lives are in. You know, the state of somewhere hanging between our lives and deaths.

With our souls longing to be somewhere else than the body, or so it seems. Or perhaps our bodily chemicals hating what we are doing to ourselves or are made to do to ourselves.

A tooth is like a tiny version of ourselves, the one we hardly know or feel, and the one which we can even afford to live without. Which dies away without leaving a trace, and which is replaceable, at least in its function, with a prosthetic replica.

I am not even sure if we can replace people with a prosthetic replica. We do, but not the people we love.

Just the people we need and can never meet or have.