Generation Gap Generation Gap | Page 62

Generation Gap 53 children, when they hear their child utter the words ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’, they become further entrenched in their attachment. Even when the child pulls the father’s moustache, the father does not say anything. Children are very useful. They act as go-betweens when their parents quarrel. There will always be quarrels between husbands and wives, so how does a child act as the peacemaker? If the father is sulking, the mother will tell the child to relay messages to him. The father ‘melts’ and forgets everything when he hears the word ‘daddy’, as though it were some magic mantra! (P.292) No man is truly a son to anyone in this world. Is there anywhere in this world, a son, who after being severely scolded continuously by his father for hours, tells his father he still feels oneness with him? Generally, half an hour’s worth of rebuke will make the son break relati ons with his father (P.293) If you are swayed and delighted with your child when he endearingly calls you ‘daddy’, you should understand that the joy you are experiencing is borrowed happiness, which will have to be repaid in the form of sorrow some later time. When your son grows up and insults you, you will feel sorrow and pain, and that sorrow will be the repayment of the borrowed happiness. So be cautious from the very beginning. I have stopped borrowing such happiness a long time ago. When infinite bliss exists, where is the need to seek any temporary happiness? (P.295) A young man asked his seventy-year-old neighbour who had been very depressed, why now she was saying that she wished she were dead. The man inquired what had happened. She told him that it was because her son had started quarreling with her and wanted her out of the house. In the past this same son of hers was very dear to her and was a source of lot of comfort. This is how the accounts of attachment and abhorrence unfold in life.(P.297)