You are four. You are crying for that ice-cream cone on display on that cart the happy man with the funny costume is dragging. Your parent, teacher or some other random adult stoops down with a slight frown.
"No dear! No crying. Good children don't cry. Good children don't fuss."
You are eight. Your first Term exams are about to set in. You are not exactly sure about what an E.X.A.M. is all about. You are just a happy, wandering kid who wants that bicycle your neighbor's son has. Your parent stoops down with one eye-brow raised.
"Be a good student. Get a hundred in your Math Paper. You will have it."
You are twelve. Your so called best friend left you for the new transfer student in school with the coolest imported clothes and games. You sit in a corner, head hanging low. Another random adult walks up to you. (Think of someone different from a parent or a teacher this time.. Maybe an aunt? )
"You don't get so worked up. She is bad. She will have it for what she does. You are good. Good people are ALWAYS happy. "
Bam! The next thing you know you hit puberty and are slowly making your way through middle school to high school, dealing with all the possible contradictions of the first twelve years of value-education provided to you. When you finally begin to LEARN what the world,people and values are all about. Believe me, some people have it much earlier than 12 while some much later. I chose this time period cause of the psychological transition we go through when there is an institutional transition from middle school to high school. From winning hearts of your friends to breaking hearts of many (read parents). From 'who am I ?' to ''Woah! Who the Hell am I , Dude!?'
You slowly begin to realize that it was all wrong. That ex-best friend of yours is STILL walking with her arm hooked around that now-not-so-new transfer student around the corridors. That guy who pushed you off the chair and made it look like you were the one who played the classroom prank a few years back, is still holding his reputation as the best student of your batch- a teacher's pet. Though every adult had told you for the first twelve years of your life that such deeds are bad and bad people will "have it" soon, HE is not having it . But he is supposed to. Because Adults are never wrong. Something is massively wrong with the way things are working. He is supposed to pay for it. If not.. You will make sure he does. Wait.. what is that word called? Erm... Oh yes. R-E-V-E-N-G-E. (Other phrases- getting back, getting even or even teach him a lesson). Now you can bid good-bye to the values you carried all along.
There are two kinds of worlds a child lives in. A world of illusion and fantasy created by the child himself- here there are giant super-natural creatures, castles, giant chocolate trees with thick cream flowing out from the base. The second world of illusion created by the adults- with GOOD people. These constitute of GOOD teachers who hit you only for your good, GOOD aunts and uncles who will bring you sweets and are always very good (no matter what they do to you) , GOOD boys and girls of your age who will grow up being good with you. While the bad boys and girls will only suffer- like Cinderella's step sisters and the big,bad wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. They will never be happy.
I believe one of the things that makes teenage harder than it already is, is the fact that at every step we will have to deal with so many contradictions. I personally don't believe in Karma. But even if Karma does exist there is no way of finding out whether you have got your share of repentance from that person who put you through stuff. As a teenager I just wondered why din't people tell me that bad people DO succeed. They ARE happy. They do get what they want. I learnt that they call it "being smart, clever and crooked." (and often come with that crooked smile... at least in my head they do.) For example I was brought up with the values- 'Cheating is bad. Cheaters never prosper.' It is so ingrained into my mind that I would not cheat even if I was given the answer key by my own teacher and I need those marks to pass the very exam. Quixotic much? Well in that idealistic world of mine I have seen people not just pass but top exams/classes/the batch with those answers scribbled in a piece of paper stuck under their table. What I found hard to understand is that we are different people. They topping the class had no connection with me not scoring just as well. I was the one solely responsible for my performance and that's all I needed to be concerned about. However I remember all the time I spent screaming about how these people have been bad and yet gifted with good marks.
Most people quote : Life is unfair. Nope. It is the way it has always been. It is because we expect it to synchronize with our "good people-bad people" theory that life becomes unfair. I still remember this friend of mine who did not get the barbie-doll set she was fond of for Christmas because she was bad that month. However her best friend who was in her eyes equally bad (or maybe worse) going by the definition given to us by adults got the same barbie set for Christmas. I now wish someone who knew better than us had explained things to her back then. She went around using the word LIFE and UNFAIR around us at an age where most of us din't even know the meaning of these words.
On this note it is apt to mention about Carl Rogers, a world-famous psychoanalyst who speaks about conditional positive regard- where the child is given a reward every time the parent feels he or she has been good and is punished every time the child has been bad. So there you have the child growing up judging himself as a person based on his rewards and punishments. Just like the bicycle child. 'If I DON'T get a hundred in math I will NOT be a good student and I DON'T deserve the bicycle that my neighbor's son has. So that makes me a worse student than him.'
So here we are stuck in a loop. Generation after generation making the same mistakes.
On a concluding note these are my personal thoughts on this Good vs Bad debate.
There are No Good or Bad People. There are people who can get really good sometimes and really bad some other times. There are people who make up for their bad with some good and some who sometimes try to get something good from their bad. Sometimes people do bad things with the conviction that it is good. Some people do good but it ends up having bad implications.
What is the conclusion to this complexity? To stop categorizing things into Good or Bad, Right or Wrong. Cause the truth is no matter how old we get and how experienced we get we can never perfectly separate them, let alone associate rewards and punishments with them. So that the next time we see a child of four, eight or twelve we know that he/she will not grow up believing that life is Unfair.
"No dear! No crying. Good children don't cry. Good children don't fuss."
You are eight. Your first Term exams are about to set in. You are not exactly sure about what an E.X.A.M. is all about. You are just a happy, wandering kid who wants that bicycle your neighbor's son has. Your parent stoops down with one eye-brow raised.
"Be a good student. Get a hundred in your Math Paper. You will have it."
You are twelve. Your so called best friend left you for the new transfer student in school with the coolest imported clothes and games. You sit in a corner, head hanging low. Another random adult walks up to you. (Think of someone different from a parent or a teacher this time.. Maybe an aunt? )
"You don't get so worked up. She is bad. She will have it for what she does. You are good. Good people are ALWAYS happy. "
Bam! The next thing you know you hit puberty and are slowly making your way through middle school to high school, dealing with all the possible contradictions of the first twelve years of value-education provided to you. When you finally begin to LEARN what the world,people and values are all about. Believe me, some people have it much earlier than 12 while some much later. I chose this time period cause of the psychological transition we go through when there is an institutional transition from middle school to high school. From winning hearts of your friends to breaking hearts of many (read parents). From 'who am I ?' to ''Woah! Who the Hell am I , Dude!?'
You slowly begin to realize that it was all wrong. That ex-best friend of yours is STILL walking with her arm hooked around that now-not-so-new transfer student around the corridors. That guy who pushed you off the chair and made it look like you were the one who played the classroom prank a few years back, is still holding his reputation as the best student of your batch- a teacher's pet. Though every adult had told you for the first twelve years of your life that such deeds are bad and bad people will "have it" soon, HE is not having it . But he is supposed to. Because Adults are never wrong. Something is massively wrong with the way things are working. He is supposed to pay for it. If not.. You will make sure he does. Wait.. what is that word called? Erm... Oh yes. R-E-V-E-N-G-E. (Other phrases- getting back, getting even or even teach him a lesson). Now you can bid good-bye to the values you carried all along.
There are two kinds of worlds a child lives in. A world of illusion and fantasy created by the child himself- here there are giant super-natural creatures, castles, giant chocolate trees with thick cream flowing out from the base. The second world of illusion created by the adults- with GOOD people. These constitute of GOOD teachers who hit you only for your good, GOOD aunts and uncles who will bring you sweets and are always very good (no matter what they do to you) , GOOD boys and girls of your age who will grow up being good with you. While the bad boys and girls will only suffer- like Cinderella's step sisters and the big,bad wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. They will never be happy.
I believe one of the things that makes teenage harder than it already is, is the fact that at every step we will have to deal with so many contradictions. I personally don't believe in Karma. But even if Karma does exist there is no way of finding out whether you have got your share of repentance from that person who put you through stuff. As a teenager I just wondered why din't people tell me that bad people DO succeed. They ARE happy. They do get what they want. I learnt that they call it "being smart, clever and crooked." (and often come with that crooked smile... at least in my head they do.) For example I was brought up with the values- 'Cheating is bad. Cheaters never prosper.' It is so ingrained into my mind that I would not cheat even if I was given the answer key by my own teacher and I need those marks to pass the very exam. Quixotic much? Well in that idealistic world of mine I have seen people not just pass but top exams/classes/the batch with those answers scribbled in a piece of paper stuck under their table. What I found hard to understand is that we are different people. They topping the class had no connection with me not scoring just as well. I was the one solely responsible for my performance and that's all I needed to be concerned about. However I remember all the time I spent screaming about how these people have been bad and yet gifted with good marks.
Most people quote : Life is unfair. Nope. It is the way it has always been. It is because we expect it to synchronize with our "good people-bad people" theory that life becomes unfair. I still remember this friend of mine who did not get the barbie-doll set she was fond of for Christmas because she was bad that month. However her best friend who was in her eyes equally bad (or maybe worse) going by the definition given to us by adults got the same barbie set for Christmas. I now wish someone who knew better than us had explained things to her back then. She went around using the word LIFE and UNFAIR around us at an age where most of us din't even know the meaning of these words.
On this note it is apt to mention about Carl Rogers, a world-famous psychoanalyst who speaks about conditional positive regard- where the child is given a reward every time the parent feels he or she has been good and is punished every time the child has been bad. So there you have the child growing up judging himself as a person based on his rewards and punishments. Just like the bicycle child. 'If I DON'T get a hundred in math I will NOT be a good student and I DON'T deserve the bicycle that my neighbor's son has. So that makes me a worse student than him.'
So here we are stuck in a loop. Generation after generation making the same mistakes.
On a concluding note these are my personal thoughts on this Good vs Bad debate.
There are No Good or Bad People. There are people who can get really good sometimes and really bad some other times. There are people who make up for their bad with some good and some who sometimes try to get something good from their bad. Sometimes people do bad things with the conviction that it is good. Some people do good but it ends up having bad implications.
What is the conclusion to this complexity? To stop categorizing things into Good or Bad, Right or Wrong. Cause the truth is no matter how old we get and how experienced we get we can never perfectly separate them, let alone associate rewards and punishments with them. So that the next time we see a child of four, eight or twelve we know that he/she will not grow up believing that life is Unfair.
