By Suchitra Inamdar
A) Have you experienced sitting in front of the TV because you don’t know what to do with your own self?
B) Have you ever experienced a morning where the rising Sun does not excite you? Or when the passing of the day is just ‘by the way’?
C) Have you ever thought that giving up your life would be a befitting punishment for someone else?
D) Have you ever felt that the ‘problems’ in your life are much bigger than your life itself?
If any of the above answers are yes then you are going through classic meaninglessness leading to suicide ideation, right?
OR
A) This ‘You’ could just be a little child who does not have worthy adults to imitate and you cling to the TV, a poor semblance of some contact.
B) Or a child whose education does not organically connect him to nature, the treasure of dreaminess snatched away, one who has lots of information but no wisdom to process it.
C) A child who has learnt that life is all about empty rewards and punishments, which always come from the outside and, so every piece of disagreement or rejection is a piling catastrophe.
D) Or a child who is devoid of age-appropriate life skills because your environment had a skewed understanding of ‘love’ and ‘protection’. Children, actually ‘anti-fragile’ (beings), are mistaken as ‘fragile’ (products) (Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind, 2018)
Adults who would respond with a ‘yes’ to the first set of possibilities can call for help, take medication, seek support, seek therapy, or seek spirituality.
What about the ones (children) whose life itself responds with a ‘yes’ to the second set of above possibilities?
How are our children raised, how are they protected, how are they inspired to reach their optimum potential, how well are they connected to their roots? Answers to these provide a blueprint of the overall health and wealth of a society.
Maladjustment, ideations of suicide, addiction and many other disorders have a series of attachment issues, social and psychological issues embedded in their environmental foundation. These environments, seeped deep in the philosophies of parenting, education and the perceived nature of social responsibility, many times foster illnesses. With children who could be genetically predisposed to these vulnerabilities, these environments contribute a proliferating effect.
How and why do we sow these seeds in the future of our children? Is it because we don’t love them? No no! We do love them! But our love, so crippled by fear, teaches them how to run away from the discomforts and ghosts of our past. That is why we teach them to fear poverty, fear hard work, fear failures, fear others, fear disappointment, and then finally fear success as well. Why do we do that? Because no one taught us what to do with our past and how to transform what we learnt so as to ‘create’ in the future.
One of my clients, suffering from severe anxiety always worried about the future of his children and how they would be able to buy a home in Mumbai when the real estate prices are soaring. One day I asked him that with what guarantee he could say that his children would be in Mumbai? What are the chances that they would definitely need a property of their own? For anyone coming from the Gen X generation, my questions would look stupid. But now evaluate these questions on the basis of how Uber replaced an owned car or how the Internet banking replaced actual banking, how education shifted online, etc. These changes that could have been the imagination of Gen X are a living reality of Gen Z.
The point is not whether owning a property would become redundant. The point is that the anxiety towards this assumed constancy of the present and future is redundant. And then we come to the old tale where we have learnt that giving a man a fish will feed him for a day but teaching him how to fish will feed him for his entire life.
Following the above discussion, what are the basic principles that could be constant for millions of years for humankind that every parent could depend on?
These principles are of the body, soul and spirit. Basic principles of how the body can be nurtured, developed, tamed so that it is a capable tool for the entire lifetime – Basic principles of education, manners, discipline needed to enhance soul forces to live interdependently with every living organism in nature – Basic principles of realizing the spirit by developing a capability to watch one’s own life along with all the polarities like success and failure, challenges and smoothness.
Making children future-ready is not about preparing them for a race. It is about teaching them to recognize the wisdom through which they were born, they exist and grow. It is about showing them through our parenting and education that no matter what, these principles will never fail them.
How can one build these principles?
The first 6-7 years of your child need to be invested primarily in building a healthy body and healthy routine. 9-11 hours of sleep, homemade food, least amount of technology, no writing till the fingers are totally mature and strong, concrete and experience-based education, lot of laughter, and happy adults can ensure this development.
The next 7 years need to be invested in building healthy habits, lots of children to play, learning different skills for the limbs, connecting to the history of one’s family, community, nature, State, Country and then that of the world. Having skilled, striving adults to teach and exhibit discipline takes care of this phase. Age-appropriate personal, family and social responsibilities provide them with a sense of value and self-worth.
In the next 7 years that will finally culminate into adulthood, rigorous physical exercise, connection with ideologies by questioning them and debating them, learning every aspect of life skills required, training in self-presentation, grooming, exposure to theatre and the arts, excellence in academic performance with proper coaching takes care of this phase. A youngster needs to feel the ‘truth’ of his/her own self by appropriate challenges at the body, soul and spirit level. Such a child, who then becomes an adult, meets the world as an equal. Such a child is future-ready, has the confidence to create, visualize, sustain and strive for.
When we do this as a society, we may not be able to ‘eradicate’ maladjustment from the face of our communities but we will definitely be a much stronger and more beautiful vessel that is confident of holding even those ‘becoming adults’ who yet might fall through the cracks.
These ‘becoming adults’ will look at failure as a reality of experience subject to change, and that adds more dimensions to the ‘I’.
Failures will definitely not be a conclusion of life etched in stone.
#suicidepreventionpolicy
#mentalhealthawareness
#anthroposophy
#suicidepreventionmonth
#psychology #wellness