Tuesday 14 May 2013

A Letter to Kids-4

My dear kids,
Today, I think we should have a discussion on different “life skills”, those you should know and practice in your life. Human life passes through different stages like infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. During infancy and childhood you are cared and guided by your parents and care takers. Under their direct supervision you grow and enter into adolescents. Adolescence is that stage which includes individuals from 10 years of age to 19 years of age. During this stage of life you become a very interesting human being to yourself and others. This is a stage of transformation. At this stage you no more behave as a child, even if you behave as a child, others perceive it inappropriate. At this stage, you acquire new adult behaviours. When you behave as an adult, some might perceive it premature. It seems funny and strange as well to many of you. Adolescence is a phase of rapid physical growth and psychological maturation. In adolescence, you start abstract thinking and developing new ideas. You love and dare to experiment with a lot of good things and bad things as well. Sometimes you can’t recognize and distinguish between good and bad. Adolescence is a stage of creativity, adventures, risk taking. At this stage you may find your peers and friends more appropriate and correct than parents. You may even avoid and neglect to company and command of your parents. It is real and it happens to all of you, teenagers. Never forget my dear that adolescence period is a turning point in your life. This stage may make you more capable and potential, if you learn to live and pass through it successfully. Also, this phase may make you vulnerable to negative environment and spoil you.
            Then, a big query arises in your mind. How to deal with this stranger called adolescence! Only certain life skills will guide you in right direction. We can talk about 10 core life skills here proposed by World Health Organization for adolescents. They are Self Awareness, Empathy, Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Decision Taking, Problem Solving, Effective Communication, Interpersonal Relationship, Coping with stress and Coping with emotions.
            To inculcate self awareness, ask yourself these questions: “who am I” “what am I for”. You are giving time to friends, books and games. Do give some time to yourself every day. Recognise your strength and weakness. Recognise the opportunities and likings that you are enjoying. Recognise the threats, pressures, dislikes you are facing.
            Empathy means “feeling about others”. How much you are thinking about persons, you come across every day? How do you feel about a poor boy who doesn’t have enough money to have a bicycle like you? What do you feel when you see the poor girl is limping with a leg paralysed from polio? This feeling should be positive and it should help us to accept others. 
            We experience a lot of things every day. How many of us do analyze it with some objectives? Take an example of this instance. I saw a school boy of standard five throwing a stone at a street dog. The dog vanished from there with a lot of pain and limping. The boy and his friends laughed a lot. But his mother took note of it and told him to be kind to animals. She asked him what would be if that dog bites on your leg. Is it expected from a disciplined student like you? Now the boy started about thinking of his mistakes.
            How many of us think creatively? Creative thinking leads us to explore new opportunities, to discover new places, to invent new machines and to bring about new philosophy. Many individuals like Abraham Lincoln, Einstein and Shakespeare have become great leaders, great scientists and great writers only through creative thinking skills.
            Knowledge brings wisdom into our mind. Experience in life with addition of wisdom helps us to take constructive and calculated decisions about our action and course of life. Many times your parents take decision about your study and career. These decisions might favour your choices and sometimes they do not. No one’s life is free from problems and crisis. If we become knowledgeable and wise, we can either contribute to parents or help ourselves in solving problems in our life. Read a lot from magazines, news papers and journals to acquire knowledge. Reading is not all about reading text books only.
            Unless we express ourselves, we can’t know about what others feel about us and our plans. You should talk and share about your opinions, needs, fears and desires before others. You should not hesitate to ask for others’ advice and help in a time of need. It also helps you to utilise others’ knowledge, wisdom and experience in solving your own issues and crisis. Effective communication helps you to establish interpersonal relationship with your parents, relatives, friends and members in your society.
            Emotion is expression of our mind towards happenings around us. Intense emotions like anger and sadness have negative effects on your health. You should be able to recognize your and others’ emotion. We should have ability to recognize the sources of stress in our life. You should not let stress ruin the quality of your life. You should control the stress in your life. You should learn to relax every day and follow healthy life styles.
            “Life skills are the abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.” It is today’s “take home message” for all of us. Next time we’ll talk about healthy life styles.
Yours lovingly,
Uncle Prabir.
 1 January,2013

Thursday 14 February 2013

A letter to Kids-3

A letter to Kids-3

My Dear Kids,
Today we’ll have discussion on such a topic which might be of zero relevance to many of us. Many of us might find my discussion quite funny. Some might be serious enough to listen me and give due attention to share my opinion. Some might ask for scientific rationality behind my opinion. I think you could recall that in my previous address, I had told you that we would talk about God. Who is God? How does God look? Where does God stay? God is a male or female? I am also quite curious enough about the questions and queries arising in your tender mind. I’ll be glad if you ask me a lot of questions on God. Before going to discussion, I accept that this discussion might appear contradictory, incomplete and immature to many of us. I may say, I am taking this opportunity to share my perception about God which may not be an ultimate truth. But what we’ll discuss is one of the hypotheses about God. Since we exist on the earth and we are believer of science and logic always.

Since my childhood, I have been told that God is omnipresent. If he is omnipresent, why God is invisible? Does God really exist? I have never seen God. If we can’t see God, why should we lose our precious time in discussing about it? We can’t end up without reaching a conclusion.

It is a mystery that the earth got created. Who created a lot of flora and fauna on this earth? What is that force which is behind these mysteries? You may say that the nature with interaction of earth, air, water and fire produced first life. In this great universe there might be more than one planets sustaining life like earth which are yet to be discovered and established. If this great unseen force created dinosaurs, humans, plants, tigers etc on this earth, it really is above us. Who created us we coined that force and power as God. Whomever we worship today and pray today, all of them have come to this earth after its creation. We have accepted them as incarnation of that unseen force and power.

What religion the God belongs to? What gender the God has? Which caste the God is from? If the God is the creator of this universe and earth, the God should not have a caste and religion. The god should not have a gender. We the human beings worship God as our father and as our mother. God had created us and we have given God the gender and religion. Theist are those who believe in the existence of a god or gods, especially believe in a personal God as creator and ruler of the world.

An atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God. Atheism says that God may/may not exist but belief in God is not a factor in our life.  To be without a belief in God merely means that the term "God" has no importance. Surely this is quite different from denying the existence of God. Atheism is not a belief as such. It is the lack of belief in God itself.

It matters nothing to the creator of earth whether we believe in God or not. Most of us as members of modern civilization believe that our work will decide our fate. If we do well to others we receive the same in return. If I be kind to you will be same to me. We are going to temples, mosques, churches etc to offer our prayer as per our religious belief and it is a way to live. But my dear friends never forget there is something unseen and too powerful playing the role behind our existence on this earth. I’ll not tell you to go for a search for God rather I would like to make an appeal to you to believe in that “superpower” which is above this earth and universe to give you inner belief and strength to grow into a good human being. I would like to tell you to work hard to fulfil your personal dreams in life. This is for today. Now let me say ‘good bye’ to all of you. 
Yours lovingly,
              Uncle Prabir.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

You can write me on my email: drprabir2007@rediffmail.com

Dr Prabir Ranjan Moharana
CARE-India, 14, Pataliputra Colony
Patna-800013, Bihar, India.