Embracing life

Embracing life

November 2015

By Megha Vaishnav

When Megha Vaishnav accepted her son’s negative emotions along with his positive ones, not only did his unruly behavior subside, it also opened up a series of insights “My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents and I lay them both at his feet.”-Mahatma Gandhi I always attributed my shattered self-esteem to faulty parenting. I was therefore determined to be a good parent. Even before God blessed me with motherhood, I had read many books on parenting and the idea of perfect and peaceful parenting throbbed in my veins. Finally, that magical moment came when my baby was placed in my arms and those little fingers entwined mine. I was overwhelmed with boundless love and fleeting joy. Fleeting because unconsciously in the deep recesses of my heart, an ambition to show the world my prowess as a good mother was born. After all, my armoury boasted of hundreds and thousands of books on how to raise a child effectively. Alas, as time passed by, I was utterly disappointed to see that all those rehearsed parenting strategies in my quiver needed to be cast away. My three-year-old son (a child of difficult temperament) was turning out to be just the opposite of what I always wanted. Despite my best efforts, he was whining, arrogant, rude and violent. I couldn’t bring myself to accept such behaviour. Pangs of guilt took over my mind and I started wondering where I had gone wrong. I fell to pieces, and plunged into sadness, loneliness, fear and depression. When I reflected, I realized that in striving to be a perfect mother, I had lost my genuineness, my real self which is a composite of positive as well as negative traits. It then occurred to me that with all my energies directed towards perfection, I had rejected any form of negative behaviour. It dawned upon me that I needed to embrace it all. Yes, there it was! That was my newfound mantra – Embrace it all. If I could accept my child jumping with joy, then his kicking, wailing, and tantrums also needed to be accepted. With this insight, a shift started happening in my behaviour. I started accepting my son even in the worst of his moods. I ensured that I validated his emotions rather than judging them as rational or irrational. I started acknowledging his negative feelings without giving in to his unrealistic demands. Earlier, whenever I used to take my son out, he would create a terrible scene while coming back. Now, instead of pulling an embarrassed face, I simply hug him and say, “I understand you are kicking and wailing because you are feeling bad, but it’s time to go home.” Emotions, feelings and reactions don’t follow logic, so why not simply embrace them? Now, whenever I am dealing with any emotional confrontations with my son or others, I let the faculty of judgment take rest. Surprisingly, I have started observing a change in my son’s behaviour, as well as that of other people. This discovery is impacting me at many levels. Just as your kid will not always behave the way you want him to, neither will life. So why not embrace it the way it is? Initially, I used to get shaken to the core by any negative news that appeared on TV and newspaper. If someone close to me exhibited apathy or reacted negatively, I used to either lash out or blink tears of self-pity. I would then go into a reverie on why God’s world was unfair, and why there was so much suffering around. The negative triggers of the world would compel me to deny negative emotions and resolve to stay positive come what may.

However, such a state remained elusive to me and I used to wonder why. For years, I had been trying to transform a negative emotion into a positive one by either ignoring it or suppressing it. I have now understood that all this while I had been fighting against negative emotions rather than embracing them – an attempt as futile as covering the mouth of a volcano. I have not turned immune to the negativities in the world. They still affect me, but I now allow myself to go with the flow and embrace whatever I feel, just like a silent spectator. Whenever I hear negative news, I simply say a silent prayer for the bereaved and move on with my chores without letting those negativities control my mind. If I am criticised by a colleague or a family member I use that as an opportunity to look within myself. In the past, my own imperfections at a task always pressed my buttons. The paranoid inner harridan would hurl a string of abuses at me at the slightest mistake. Indeed, now it dawns upon me that my low self-esteem cannot be ascribed to my parents, but to this inner critic who was never ready to embrace it all. Now when this critical voice echoes any self-limiting beliefs, I simply take a deep breath with a smile rather than feeding it or avoiding it. When I do this, the voice grows quiet just like my child who initially throws a tantrum to get his way but calms down once his feelings are embraced without my giving in to them. Indeed, now I am grateful for these imperfections as they make me more humane and tolerant to negativities, imperfections and miseries in my inner world as well as the world around. So what if I am not a perfect mother? So what if my writing needs rigour? So what if I still struggle with deadlines? So what if I still give in to my craving for rich food?

My imperfections are not me! I am a beautiful soul, God’s creation, someone who can love and be loved; someone who doesn’t know it all, but loves to learn. Someone who really wants to give something back to society, and make it a better place. As long as this insight stays with me, I love being myself. I love the positives and the negatives, the imperfect and the perfect, the adulation and the criticism, the joys and sorrows, the companionship and brief moments of solitude. As I write this I am open to accepting and embracing the entire spectrum of emotions – be they ecstatic, uplifting and joyful or sorrowful, distressed and scary. After all, each is a learning module in the course of life, isn’t it?

About the author : Megha Vaishnav is a writer, teacher, trainer, mother and learner, who is deeply interested in holistic teaching and raising children with awareness