Today is Children’s Day in India.
We all are aware of the amazing grace children have. They are blessed with unconditional grace to laugh open-heartedly, cry and scream with a passion, run fearlessly, pray with sincerity and love with a pure heart. Children have hearts that speak the truth and minds that follow their heart. They are already born with a mind to think which some people fail to understand. As Khaled Hosseini said, “Children aren’t colouring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors”. As adults, our responsibility is to teach them to think, to question and not to say to people who hurt them. Sometimes, we overwhelm our children with excess love that we hold them back from reality.
We all are aware of the amazing grace children have. They are blessed with unconditional grace to laugh open-heartedly, cry and scream with a passion, run fearlessly, pray with sincerity and love with a pure heart. Children have hearts that speak the truth and minds that follow their heart. They are already born with a mind to think which some people fail to understand. As Khaled Hosseini said, “Children aren’t colouring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors”. As adults, our responsibility is to teach them to think, to question and not to say to people who hurt them. Sometimes, we overwhelm our children with excess love that we hold them back from reality.
Perhaps the most moving moment for me in many years living and working in India, was sitting on a platform in Vijawada, one sunny afternoon. There was a poor man, a day labourer by his dress, in his early 30s. He was sitting there with his 3 years old daughter, clad in a ragged blue dress. She had large, beautiful dark eyes. She cuddled up to her Father. An ice cream vendor walked by, and for a fleeting micro second, she looked at her father, suggesting he buy. one, but knowing that her father was poor, she looked away with embarrassment, and shut the thought out of her head. A few minutes later, the ice cream vendor returned down our end of the platform. And her father spoke a few words in Telugu to the vendor, he pulled some coins from the folds of his lunghi, and brought his daughter an ice cream, a treat he could ill-afford. Their eyes locked for some seconds and the radiant smile and her glinting eyes, told her Father of her deep love and appreciation for him. They cuddled together as she ate her ice cream.
If someone asks me " Have I seen true love, I say "I saw it on a railway platform in India, between a poor father and daughter."
I was reminded of this through Denis McClean who directed me to a blog site: http://wanderingdaph.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/love-to-love-like-a-child/
