Thank You- She meant it!

My heart just skipped a beat as the words "Thank you maa" in the melodious voice of my 3 year old daughter hit my ears, they are echoing in my head perpetually. It was one of those very rare moments when the joy filled my whole being to the extent that it began to ooze out of my eyes, making my skin feel warmer and my throat choked as I served her a Hot parantha on her plate. She looked straight into my eyes with those three words, in her high pitched voice full of gratitude making me feel so worthy as I have never before felt.

In that moment, she made worthwhile the ordeal that I have went through every single day ever since I conceived her, carried her- within and without, trying to make the most of every moment with her for her. When every one else was still waiting for her to begin interacting and speaking, I was engrossed in her quietude as much as I was enjoying her journey to developing language skills. Mother is busy conversing with the child every moment in her silence when the world still awaits the words to flow out of her mouth. 

It has been rightly said "Don't worry that your children don't listen to you, worry that they're always watching you". 

Surprisingly I have seldom directed her to say "Thank you" to any one or at any instance. However, her father and I have, both, always religiously practiced it, for her to witness, thanking her, each other, our helpers and everyone else whenever possible and she has imbibed it well. What further fills my heart with amazement is that its not mere words that she utters as a matter of training, as most of us do most trivially, rather she embodies gratitude in its crystalline form as she says "Thank You", each time she is served to by anyone- be it me, her father, a friend or our house-help. She never forgets to say Thank You because it is her own prized learning. Because, learning is as natural as breathing, something we don't realise at all.

Gratitude cannot be simply "Taught" It can only be practiced for your kids to not "learn" but "imbibe"
Our Children bestow upon us, the precious opportunity to learn what we might have missed being vulnerable in our childhood. Instead, we proudly abuse the power that we have been bequeathed, by mother nature. We have become unconscious stooges of the futile system ourselves and we happily pass it on to our children, confining them to being the racehorses when their individual self is meant for much more. We consciously hammer upon them phrases like "Say Thank you", "Sharing is Caring", "Say sorry" etc. when we mean them the least or not at all. Merely, telling them to say these when we're so full of anguish, anger and ego all the time will only create another generation of cunning human beings and nothing more.

The least we can do for our children is practice instead of preaching. The least we can do for ourselves is make the most of the precious opportunity to learn "The Art of being" from our little ones and bear Gratitude for they chose us.