Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, in his June 9 lecture at the University of Puerto Rico shared the following story:
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 the sugar plantations. We were deep in the country and had no neighbors, 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 theater. 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 and got the car and hurried to where my father was waiting for me, it was almost 6:00.
He anxiously asked me, "Why are 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 is still as if it happened yesterday.
That is the power of non-violence.
Hello, its a good lesson indeed but I am curious about the title. Do parents react to a lying child with violence? I think most parents would react with a scolding but it probably won't help trigger self-reflection in a child.
ReplyDeleteI assume, taken in Gandhi's Non-Violence Philosophy's context, reacting in the above way to a child's bad behavior is considered non-violent and bound to bring about a deep impression in the child's mind and permanently correct that behavior. But it doesn't mean it will work with children of other parents.
ReplyDeleteThis so-called 'non-violent' reaction is in direct contrast to the use of the cane which modern disciplinarians decry as 'corporal punishment' which means something close to violence. In between is a traditional scolding which would normally be lost as soon as the moment is over.
Maybe I should have kept the original title of the message as 'Gandhism' which may sound less misleading?
Thanks for pointing out this little discrepancy.