What kind of information should I share with the centre?
Recently I had been to one fireless cooking competition. There were kids and accompanying them were Grandies, mothers and I could spot some fathers too. The competition was between the duo as in each child with any 1 elder who had to help the child with their directions. I could see the audience chirping with the zeal to exhibit something exuberant. After a bit of helter-skelter which is a normal feature of any such event, finally the competition began.
“Remember what I told you....... no no no you have placed it wrong ........... don’t use too much of the ................. what are you doing ................”
These and some more of the so called directions were readily available for us to distract our attention from what the kids were actually doing. However, one father-daughter duo caught my sight. I noticed that the little girl was smiling and doing something and the father was just mum, raising his thumb once in a while as a gesture of encouragement I suppose.
From the other end, suddenly one loud cry of outburst shrilled the air. One child had resorted to crying due to non accomplishment of what he intended to make. Of course, my attention was there now.
The competition came to an end in a short while. All the little chefs had placed their edible fireless creation at the table right in front of them with their partners by their side. Some were digging elbows to hush-hushly get the child make amends there, some were chatting as to what went wrong, some were standing nervously looking at the judges.
Again, my eyes got stuck at that father-daughter duo and to my amazement they were still exchanging smiles standing right beside one another.
Then came our turn to take a round, observe, taste (wherever possible or if we wanted to), and judge their fireless cooking. You got to relate it now, how and why I was there. Yes! I had been invited for judging this competition. We began with one superbly attractive sprout chat. The foodie inside me was really craving for it and I tasted it. It was some great work I tell you, I wish I had eaten one more spoon.
Then we moved ahead…. we as in there were three of us as judges. If you had visualised something else earlier, please redesign it. …….. Well! We witnessed some really messy to some neatly assembled dishes. We tasted few more of them (I don’t know why I trusted some of them for their looks and tasted – as such it was a part of what I had been there for).
I was now really interested to reach and witness what that father-daughter duo had come up with. So I was pretty quick at judging the not so good items. (I admit this wasn’t fair). Then came the point that I was waiting for to reach quickly. Yup! I was right in front of the amazing duo…… To my set back, I saw a completely messed up sandwich full of veggies that were coming off from the sides, the ketchup was more at the outer edges than the inside ……… and …………. well, the word mess should have added few more degrees to it.
The judging was done, the awards were given away, with of course the father-daughter duo, nowhere near the winners. I was wondering why they were still so happy. I was confused and I suppose, had you seen me at that time, you would have definitely noticed one question mark on my forehead.
I couldn’t resist asking the parent about the reason. I was taken by amazement with the answer. The father said that neither was he looking for an award nor was he willing to turn his child into a robot who does exactly as being told. He added that he wanted to teach the daughter the value of efforts.
I took a few moments to smile in agreement. I couldn’t sleep until late that night, instead I wrote this out.
This is true, what we have been channelled for is achieving success through perfection. We somehow neglect the importance of efforts first. What is perfection? There will be updations every now and then in everything we come across which would make the perfection obsolete. Efforts however, would remain intact as they do not have any degree, classification or parameters of being judged. Efforts are efforts.
The little Turtles at our homes need us to have faith in them, to encourage them to do something on their own, even if it doesn’t fetch them some award or success.
Try it with them………… encourage them to put in EFFORTS rather than being behind them for perfection.
Give EFFORTS a chance and witness wonderful outcomes!
