Teach children to remain innocent

Yesterday, I said that you could help the planet by planting a tree. Well, today I'm going to show you another way you can help.

You can teach your children to keep their innocence instead of showing them how to lose it.

Yes, we, as adults, are responsible for the loss of innocence in our children. We don't do it intentionally. We probably don't even realise that we're doing it. We think we are giving them life skills but, in reality, we are teaching them to judge and be discriminating.

By teaching children what is right and wrong, we are giving them our opinion based on the opinion of the majority that we've accepted as resonating with us as our truth. But, It might not be based on fact nor be an absolute reality. By introducing them to the concepts of happy/sad, good/bad, hot/cold, we are teaching them to judge so that they may avoid unduly suffering. Our intentions are good. We want to protect them from the pain we've been through in our lives.

Yet suffering serves a purpose, too, and it teaches us invaluable lessons; lessons that perhaps we cannot learn any other way than facing our pain head on, learning from it and releasing it.

All of us lose our innocence when we start to discriminate. If we are to live on this planet, as the one Human Race that we are, we MUST teach our children to NOT discriminate. I understand that, with all the tragic fighting and wars, death and devastation, it's very hard to teach our children not to judge BUT ... the majority of you, reading this, probably have the privilege to live in a war free zone. So, you can teach your children to show love, kindness and compassion.

Do we all not search for love our entire lives? Is the hope, then, that love will, eventually, heal everything - even the deepest wounds? Well, what if love is never lost? It is inside us the whole time but we never see it until, one day, someone comes along who reflects it right back at us.

When we teach our children how to discriminate, we are effectively teaching them how to judge and while we're distracted, by judging each other in the physical plane, we miss the beautiful qualities that truly make up who we are, and who we are is one and the same. There is no difference between you and I. When we realise there is no difference, we can no longer live in separation and that is when we become one - The One Human race we have always been.

My cage has been rattled!

Ok, my cage has been rattled and, as those of you who know me know, when my cage is rattled, I don’t get angry but I do start to kind of choke on sparkles of fire drops, and then I find it very difficult to be quiet. So, here I am with another article.

Everyday, everywhere we’re willing to look, if we open our eyes, we can see poverty and conditions that can be considered less than human by today’s living standards. Whether we choose to ignore them or not, the fact remains that there are starving human beings in the world; children, men and women. The fact also remains that there are people without a roof over their heads and without clean water to drink.

We may not know their faces and we may think the problem isn’t ours. We may even think the problem is so remote from where we live that it’s none of our concern, but that’s not the case.

There is no country in this world that doesn’t have poverty or sub-human conditions. There is no country in this world that doesn’t have someone living on a park bench or under a bridge or out in the desert or in a cardboard box. Most of the time, we don’t see it or we choose not to see it because we look the other way, and we all have our reasons for doing so.

Some of us think that by looking the other way, the problem will go away. Some of us think the person on the street should get a job like the rest of us. Some of us think that by giving a euro to someone, we’re only going to be feeding their drug habit. Some of us can’t even look at a person on the street because it brings feelings of guilt about the way we live and what we have in our lives. Instead of feeling grateful for what we have, in the face of the misfortune of another, we subconsciously feel guilty.

Some of us may even feel apathetic and so saturated by all the poverty and harsh conditions out there, that we turn our backs for that very reason. I find that even sadder than poverty itself.

Yet, what disturbs me and rattles my cage the most is when people just sit around talking about tragic conditions and poverty by saying: “how tragic, how sad, makes me cry,” yet they do little or nothing to lift a finger to help relieve some of the suffering out there in the world. Of course, I am not talking about everyone, and of course there are many many people who help. I am fortunate and blessed to know plenty of them.

It would either seem that people just don’t realise how much of a difference they can actually make if they were truly willing to. Or, in the face of it all, they still do nothing. It is sad, I’m not saying it isn’t, but a starving human being doesn’t put food in his stomach with words or people sitting around feeling sympathetic. A freezing human being, living on the street, doesn’t warm up with people sitting around feeling sorry for him or turning away.

I can understand people’s apprehensions nowadays, but I’m sure if people had the choice, nobody would willing, freely or whole-heartedly opt to live in a cold, hostile or starving environment.

Yet, what we forget is that there are so many ways to help and it doesn’t always have to be with grand gestures. It doesn’t always have to be with money and it doesn’t always have to take up hours and hours of your time.

For example, if you don’t want to give the guy on the street a euro because you’re afraid he’ll go and buy drugs, go and buy him a sandwich. Think about whether it’s really about the euro and the drugs or whether it’s an excuse not to part with a possession that’s yours. Let me remind everyone that when we die, we can’t take any of it with us. Or, worse still, is it because we can’t bare the thought of being close to someone who is smelly and dirty -someone who reminds us of everything that we don’t ever want to become; our worst nightmare and the darkest side of life we couldn’t bare to face.

I can guarantee you this: when you give the guy that sandwich, if he’s hungry, he’ll be truly grateful and if you throw in a coffee, the look of gratitude he’ll give you will be priceless. It will warm your heart for years to come. In fact, you may never forget that look for as long as you live, and when he dies, you’ll remember him and know that you played your part in trying to keep him alive.

Yet, not everything is about money. The men and women sleeping on park benches and in cardboard boxes, they get cold too in winter. For those of you who like to have spring cleans and throw out old blankets, have you ever thought about asking any one of those human beings if they need a blanket, a jacket or a coat? The problem is, half the time, we’re afraid to talk to these people because most of the time we see them as less than human or even as simpletons.

Yet, less than human George may have a sad story. He may have lost his job and his wife. His children may have abandoned him. So, he feels he has nothing left to live for. He simply lives on the grass because he feels he’s at God’s mercy until death comes for him, and most of the time he wishes death would come for him. He’s grateful for any kind word anyone has to say to him in passing by the local bus stop.

The young girl, Helen, who everyone makes fun of, and who has been pushed from pillar to post between institutions, may have lost her mother and her husband prematurely to cancer and has nowhere to go. Her home may be possessed by someone who doesn’t really want her there. Her only child may have been taken away from her and she may not be allowed to see him. She too may feel like she has nothing much in life. She has food from a local shelter but what she really needs is someone to give her a kind word and put their arm around her and let her know that tomorrow will be ok.

Until we know why someone is where they are, we cannot second guess someone’s life or what they’ve been through, and trust me everyone has a story. Yet, the problem, I think, with our world is that not everyone has ears they’re willing to use. Sure, we all listen, but do we really listen?

There are so many ways to help others; distributing food to shelters; sponsoring (or adopting) children in their own countries, helping the elderly, visiting people in hospital through organisations, and the list could go on and on.

We can all donate some of our time, our love, our talent, our prayers and maybe some of our money - there are 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. The important thing is to realise that everyone can make a difference if they really want to. A tiny gesture to you may mean the world to another human being.

Lies, Lies, Lies ...

Throughout my whole life, I’ve found myself somehow blessed (or cursed) to be fitted with a kind of innate lie detector. Yet the older I get, the more attuned it seems to be.

Every time I hear a lie – even if it’s a little white one - it’s almost as if a string of red lights start flashing at the back of my eyes and a stream of alarm bells, similar to those of Notre Dame, start ringing inside my head. My whole body starts to oscillate very subtly as if it’s on a frequency of its own.

Although I smile politely and say nothing - as if I believe every word I’m being told - I cringe to the very core of me. My teeth shudder and my bones feel that same eerie discomfort as they do when someone scrapes their fingers along a board of polystyrene.

In my younger years when I didn’t really know what I was dealing with, I use to find it very painful and uncomfortable; especially if the person telling the lie(s) was a loved one or a friend. Nowadays, although it’s still painful to an extent, I just accept it as a part of every day life.

Let’s face it, at some point we’ve all lied about something. We might have lied at a job interview just so we could land the job of our dreams. We might have lied on a first date just to make a good impression. We might have lied to our parents when we snuck out one day. We lie to ourselves all the time when we lead ourselves into false believes. The biggest lie of all is when we say: “We never lie.” We may not like to admit that we do or we may be so self-conceited that we convince ourselves that we don’t; but we all do at some point. It’s a natural part of being a human being. Of course, there are also compulsive liars out there who can no longer distinguish truth from fiction; but I’m not even going to go down that road here.

Even with the best intentions in the world of committing, from this day forward, to never lie again; at some point in the future, we will all lie about something whenever we believe the circumstances dictate that we should do so - even if it’s just to safeguard someone we love from something – Telling a lie for the greater good. I don’t have a problem with that kind of lie; even though technically it’s still a lie.

Personally, I don’t really condone the telling of lies. Yet, even though I cringe to the very bone, I move past them and accept people as they are. However, on the one hand, there are times when I do question if my silent acceptance of someone else’s lies makes me instrumental in their continuation to carrying on telling them. After all, we are all pawns in each others’ chess games. On the other hand, each and every one of us is solely responsible for ourselves.

What I find fascinating, is the motivation behind the act of telling a lie. It intrigues me. I find it contemporaneously amusing and sometimes very sad; amusing because motivations vary and sometimes border on the ridiculous; sad because it can quietly install a deep sense of distrust and insecurity between people, which can push people apart and be very difficult, or virtually impossible, to rebuild.

So just why do people tell lies? – Well, here are just a few of my suggestions, which I’m sure you can add a whole load more to:

To hide the truth of a situation
- Because telling the truth about a situation might hurt someone else.
- Because the person in question doesn’t really want to admit the reality of the situation to themselves; let alone to anyone else.
- Because the truth of a situation could be compromising for the person in question or other people around them;
- In matters of the heart, it could be because the person telling the lie is indecisive or a player who just wants to keep all their options open; to ensure the opposite sex never strays too far away from them.
- Because the truth of a situation may mean admitting defeat or failure to one’s self and/or to others.

To make an impression;
- To be liked by others;
- To land the dream job where an extra push is necessary;
- To be promoted at work where maybe a lack of “actual merit” is present;
- To be regarded/respected in some way to make up for something else lacking in another area of someone’s life. Or, for lack of sufficient self-belief that just being one’s self would be enough;

To protect
- Parents sometimes lie to their children to protect them from harm, i.e. the classic bogie man story.
- Children lie to parents about where they’ve been all night.
- Boyfriends/Husbands lie to Girlfriends/wives (and vice versa) about trespasses, illnesses, job situations, finances etc.

The lists could go on forever and I’m sure you could all come up with a whole range of categories. I‘ve just jotted these down off the top of my head.

As a Buddhist, I took a vow not to lie. Yet, oddly enough, there is an exception clause in the case of necessity for the greater good. However, for me that is a very grey area because what might be considered the greater good for one person may not necessarily be the greater good for another. Who can make that call?

When all is said and done, there are no guidelines in life for lies; not for telling them nor for being on the receiving end. We can only take responsibility for ourselves. Before we say something that isn’t true, we can only explore what is motivating us to be untrue, put our hand on our heart, listen to our conscience and see if we can truly live with what we are about to say.

by Venerina Conti
www.venerinaconti.com,

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