Makes u think

[Guest guest]

I'm not sure if you guys have read this mail before, but in the fair chance that

you have not, then this really makes one think a little bit more...

 

I really don't know who told this, but I read this Eric.S.Raymond's cathedral

and the bazaar Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the

Gandhi Institute for Non-violence, in his June lecture at the University of

Puerto Rico, shared the following story as an example of non-violence in

parenting:

" I was 16 years old and living with my parents at the institute my grandfather

had founded 18 miles outside of Durban, South Africa, in the middle of sugar

plantations. We were deep in the country and had no neighbours, so my two

sisters and I would always look forward to going to town to visit friends or go

to the movies. One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an all-day

conference, and I jumped at the chance. Since I was going to town, my mother

gave me a list of groceries she needed and, since I had all day in town, my

father asked me to take care of several pending chores, such as getting the car

serviced.

When I dropped my father off that morning, he said, 'I will meet you here at

5:00 p.m., and we will go home together.' After hurriedly completing my chores,

I went straight to the nearest movie theatre. I got so engrossed in a John

Wayne double-feature that I forgot the time. It was 5:30 before I remembered.

By the time I ran to the garage, got the car, and hurried to where my

father was waiting for me, it was almost 6:00. He anxiously asked me, 'Why were

you late?' I was so ashamed of telling him I was watching a John Wayne western

movie that I said, 'The car wasn't ready, so I had to wait,' not realizing that

he had already called the garage.

When he caught me in the lie, he said: 'There's something wrong in

the way I brought you up that didn't give you the confidence to tell me the

truth. In order to figure out where I went wrong with you, I'm going to walk

home 18 miles and think about it.' So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he

began to walk home in the dark on mostly unpaved, unlit roads. I couldn't leave

him, so for five-and-a-half hours I drove behind him, watching my father go

through this agony for a stupid lie that I uttered. I decided then and there

that I was never going to lie again. I often think about that episode and

wonder, if he had punished me the way we punish our children, whether I would

have learned a lesson at all. I don't think so. I would have suffered the

punishment and gone on doing the same thing. But this single non-violent action

was so powerful that it feels like it happened yesterday. That is the power of

non-violence. "

 

 

 

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