Once again, I want and dare to pass on to you some of my reflections and thoughts, selected from among those that I share with some of my family and friends every day, at midnight, through WhatsApp. They are simple meditations out loud, some of which are original, several already enunciated and renewed, and others copied ad litteram. If I do not quote all the authors, it is not to subtract their thoughts but because I do not know at that moment who they belong to, and because with the passage of time and continued reading, one ends up making the knowledge of others their own. Nor do I pretend, far from it, that they accept them; they are a mere invitation to the analytical coexistence of each one of you. Read them, if you have time and you like, and assess how much you agree or disagree with what you are going to read. And of course I do not intend to convince anyone, much less lead anyone. Those of us who are already many years old have more than enough to lead our own lives.
Today I want to dedicate these reflections to parents, who are ultimately responsible for the education of their children. Go ahead, I recognize that, although many have had the fortune to be able to study and sanction their knowledge, none, to my knowledge, has revalidated their ability to exercise parenthood. I myself am among those lucky ones who were able to acquire knowledge; However, although they have required me to obtain a bachelor’s degree to pursue a university career, study and finish a medical degree to be able to practice as a doctor, obtain a driver’s license to be able to drive a car…, no one previously forced me to demonstrate my ability to be a responsible father and have and educate up to seven children.
The nun of Albanian origin Santa Teresa de Calcutta (1910-1997) stated in her day: “I think that the world today is upside down, and it suffers so much because there is very little love in homes and in family life. We don’t have time for our kids, we don’t have time for each other.” These are words full of certainty that we have to accept and that, in some cases we saw aggravated and, in others distorted, by the restrictions and limitations of freedoms imposed in the current pandemic, still latent now and with the capacity to continue killing. However, it is also true that this situation led parents to have a closer and continuous coexistence with their children, with its advantages and risks, since, being more lasting and intense, it influenced more the thoughts and feelings of all the lives of their children.
This very special situation led me to meditate on that truth denounced by the Italian doctor and pedagogue Maria Montessori (1870-1952): “If help and salvation are to come, it can only be through children. Because children are the creators of humanity.” And since it is about humanity, it is good to remember that we should not lose faith in it and that the comparison of the ocean that is always clean despite the rot that men throw at it is still valid. Everything remains in mere drops of dirt in an immense ocean of good men. We must not forget the immense care that we have to lavish on our children or grandchildren, since they will be as good as the education that we know how to give them and as brilliant as we leave them, according to their own potential and the possibilities that we put at their disposal. Nor can we lose sight of the fact that children need a lot of love, more than they, due to their immaturity, are capable of expressing. The French priest and founder of the Marist Brothers, Marcellin Champagnat (1789-1840), used to say: “The most appropriate character to educate children and young people in a humane and Christian way is the one that brings together the cheerfulness, affability and perseverance that can only be found in a humble and kind heart”
When educating them and sharing our knowledge with them, it is good to consider what the Irish writer and Nobel Prize for Literature winner William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) said: “Education is not filling a bucket, it is lighting a fire”. We must try to discover the capacities of our children, but not tell them which ones to develop and enhance. The future of children, and therefore of society, is largely conditioned by parents allowing and helping their children to be authentic men, not modulated to their liking and way. We must let them be as they want, which is what they can and should be and not as we please, even if it sounds good to us. No, it does not affect us that our children follow a path different from ours; the only thing that should matter to us is that they are on a good path, but the one that they choose freely and to which we have to concur giving them all the support we can. Or put another way, let us make it easier for them to be men who freely seek their destiny, carrying their truth in their hands, men with more desire to give than to receive. Even if they later pay you with ingratitude, they must have the conviction that it is always a source of joy to have fulfilled their duty, in accordance with reason, conscience and the laws. Although unfortunately there are laws that are not fair, they are immoral and go against nature.
Anyway, everything has its limitations, the educational process as well. It is imperative to educate our children and establish rules of conduct, but at the same time let them be a little irresponsible, according to their age and immaturity; the excess of responsibility forces them to stop being children. As much as possible, we will establish few prohibitions for our children because what we do is stimulate the desire for the prohibited. In addition, it is not that seeking so much perfection we leave them without childhood. In short, neither angels nor demons, only children.
When the years go by and our children ask us for “new freedoms”, we will tell them not to hurry, that everything will come, that they do not ask us for what is not typical of their age. We will also tell you that if you are in such a hurry to advance the maturity that you have not yet reached, later you will regret having been left without childhood and youth. Adults will be seen without having been young. Although it is also true that if a man does not mature at an age, without ceasing to be jovial, he is unbearably immature.
We will also teach our children that it is better to be prestigious than popular, that the journey with which one arrives is much more important than success, which is not always achieved; that facts are much more important than words; that showing is much more important than talking; that we must allow serious and honest information to enter our brain and not inconsistent and rough information; and that there is trying to win but not to win in any way… in short, that they learn to be good men. To that end, we will imbue them, right from the beginning, that to be good it is not enough to have good faith and not exercise evil; goodness demands an active and generous exercise. They must also learn to be moderate; although it is said that man is the rational animal par excellence; looking at some, one would say that he is nothing more than an omnivore with pants, tie and big jaws.
Let’s not stop instilling a lot of consideration and love for their family, which requires that they watch their tongue when they talk about their family or friends because, otherwise, they are contributing to undoing the best they have. The good thing about those who love us is that they will always be our support whether things go well or badly. Our children have to know that in the game of life they have to play with the good cards, read: dedication, friendship, fidelity and loyalty… and always to a single number: family and friends. A group that they have to know and exercise from the beginning, with a central axis, affection for their parents, grandparents and siblings, naturally, but keeping it in mind, lest they not fall for it until the moment they lose them. And, when due to age or illness, grandparents and parents leave permanently, they must bear in mind that we are who we are thanks to those who have preceded us and what we have done afterwards with what they had previously taught us. That is why we are obliged, even if it is only in their memory, to recover from their loss and continue, so that they can look down on us with a smile of satisfaction.
It reminds me of the age when I was a child and the custom of so-called compliment visits was lavished, to which from time to time they took you without consulting you. It was the most ridiculous thing that existed, they talked about the weather, if it was cold or if it was hot and little else. I am well aware that those ladies, whom one saw as powdered old women —although possibly they were not so much so— hugged you and told you that you were very rich, with a very repeated gesture: while they praised you, they squeezed your cheeks as a sign of affection. I remember it very well, because the squeeze was annoying; however, I forgive them because, thinking back, I realize that those moments were all good.
I must confess that on more than one occasion I have looked at one of my children when they were children and I have felt both, in a contradictory way, the desire and the sorrow that they would grow up. It is also true that at some point it can happen that a child leaves home, apparently tired of what surrounds him, but the reality is that almost always what happens is that he is tired of himself and, when he returns, What he says is that he is tired of the others. However, it is also true that there will come an age when they will leave to form their own family, which will certainly be ours as well.
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