Is your child ‘normal’?
With so many doctors and psychiatrics, I don’t think a ‘normal’ child is born anymore. If they are active, they are ‘hyperactive’ –ADHD. If they are a little slow, it is something else. Whichever way they are, one label is fixed, nailed to them, which they have to carry for the rest of their life. It is just that because we are trying to put all of them into one slot, they look abnormal.
It is like your traveling bag. At the airport, they have this measuring device that your bag is supposed to fit into. I am sure only the terror guys have come with the right-sized bag. But the normal passengers don’t fit their bags into it because when people travel they need things—it will be bulging and it won’t fit. So all these are abnormal people.
Have you seen a perfect mango tree? Similarly, have you seen a perfect human being? Unless they are machine turned out, there is no question of whatever you call perfect. Because we are trying to put everybody through the same kind of schooling, everybody should become a doctor, or an engineer—children are enduring this torture. Because of that, somebody looks like they have ADD or ADHD. Otherwise, every one of them is capable of doing something.
You must see the deer in the forest. They don’t work. The castrated bullock which is drawing the cart will look at them and say, ‘Those useless deer, they do nothing.’ But it is fine. That is how they should be. Unfortunately, we became industrialized societies—that means we need cogs in the wheels. We need some nut and bolt which fits into the system we have created. Well, we are partially successful as we have quite a few nuts.
We are thinking of productivity, so we are trying to produce machines which will produce more. It is not necessary that all of us should be equally capable. It is a crime to label a child as this or that because he has no clue what this stupid game is you are playing and already he is labeled, and he has to carry it for the rest of his life because you are comparing your child to your neighbor’s child.
The education system is not going to change tomorrow, but at least you don’t have to label those who are with you right now. It is all right that he cannot do what somebody else does. You do not know what he may do. A few doctors came from the United States… to visit my father. My father’s idea of success is you must become a doctor. I was the hopeless hope. So these doctors asked, ‘Please tell us something about Sadhguru when he was young.’ My father thought and said, ‘He was such a dull boy. But now he has become a genius.’
Maybe you have fifty percent geniuses in your classroom. They cannot go by your systems of A+B=C. If you make him feel ashamed of what he is not able to see, he may never speak about what he is able to see, and you don’t know what you are missing by that. He may be seeing something that nobody has seen.
The ingenuity of a human being may do much more than education could ever do. What is needed is to build a human body and human mind to its full capacity and have the necessary balance to be able to use it. If human beings walk sensibly, if they live sensibly, it is good enough. Fulfillment of life is in experiencing life in all its dimensions and that will remain a possibility only when we remain seekers of Truth and not believers of instructions or dogma that is thrown at us either by teachers or priests or pundits or scriptures that they all fall back on.
| Named one of India’s 50 most influential people, Sadhguru speaks before millions annually around the globe, including to prominent leadership forums such as the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, TED, and the World Peace Congress. From groundbreaking yoga programs to projects for rural communities and the environment, Sadhguru’s Isha Foundation (www.IshaFoundation.org) serves as a thriving model for human empowerment, which is reflected in the Foundation’s special consultative status with the UN. |
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