Generation Gap
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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)