LOVE NEEDS TO BE MADE LIKE A BREAD
“Love doesn’t just sit there like a stone;
it has to be made like a bread,
remade all the time, made new.”
Ursula K Le Guin, The Lathe of
Heaven
“Emotional blackmail! Parenting
is something, I feel, I am failing! We keep telling her to do things she is not
keen doing… I can’t engage her in books… I can’t take responsibility of a dog,
the only thing she is asking for since ages! What to do, my teacher?”
This was the daily frustration of a typical
parent. She has two little girls… One of them (age ten) has brought the mother,
once my student and now a friend who lives abroad, express her frustration here.
Now, I have had a ‘longer experience’ as a
parent compared to this student/friend of mine. So, the temptation was to give
her some ready gyan on what to do and what not to
do… Whether she should gift a dog to her little one or not.
The reality was this… My gyan was of no use for my friend to deal with
her daily situation as a parent… So, I wrote to her this:
“Wish your teacher had a ready answer! “Growing
up’, it’s called. Nobody prepared us for the parenting role as well as that of
a spouse. So repeatedly one feels clueless and even like a failure in these
roles. And, I think, this is almost everyone’s story. Incidentally, today is our
29th wedding anniversary. Just as you feel, I, too, ‘feel like a
failure’, both as a spouse and a parent! But, then, I know it’s a familiar
feeling – a continuously fleeting one – for most of us; and, yes, it’s a
reliving feeling, too.”
Whether one would admit it or not, my
friend and I felt connected through our imperfections. “Expectations we have so
many, na?” my friend wondered, “In life we get pulled in every direction. These
are moments when you feel things are not going the way you would like them to…
Looks like we all are sailing in the same boat.”
Yes, we all ‘are’ sailing in the same boat.
I added: “Maybe that’s what makes Life
and relationships worth striving for… How we behave under pulls and pressures
determines the quality of our life. It’s a fragile glass… and so be it.”
Wine, they say, matures with time. But, one
doesn’t simply leave wine at the mercy of time. The same is the case with Love...
As Ursula K Le Guin says, “It needs to be made like a bread; remade all the
time, made new!”
Have we ‘failed’, then? No… Not if we are constantly
remaking it, anew!
GERALD D’CUNHA
Pic.: Madan Manik
Video: John Denver/Karen Hopr Shareton
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