Desire to protect

 “The more you are protected, the more fearful you become. The more you protect someone, the more fear you instil in them” 

And their ability to protect themselves reduces. 

Today morning I heard a screeching sound of our cat and I went out to see a big cat attacking our cat. I saw my cat on the corner of the stair withdrawing with so much fear for 30 seconds and then jump out of the compound. Parallelly my brother came out and shoved off the big cat. 

Then I started to think whether we at home have made our cat so soft (by caring too much) that it’s ability to protect itself from the outside world is diminished? Is this how we are raising our children too? By saying “don’t trust others”, “don’t go out”, “think 100 times before you do anything”, “this is a big, bad world”, “don’t do this and that”…… 

We all know too much of fear, sadness, anger or any negative emotion brings about imbalance in life. But how about too much of positive emotions like love, too much of care and affection that we show to our children and end up taking all decisions for them and don’t allow them to fail and feel hurt? Like I’ve heard parents say “I don’t want my child to struggle as much as I did”. I’ve also seen parents amassing property such that their children may not suffer? Is this helping? It’s raising fear and anxiety levels in us. 

This “too much” of care in the name of protecting children and pets could be one of the causes of anxiety and depression when they face the real world. Parents telling children “I know better how the world is and so listen to me” is proving to be a demotivation for children to explore and develop courage and resilience. Some children go timid with this or too rebellious on the other side. They put themselves into many troubles to prove to themselves that they are strong and can protect themselves. Look if you also are at the impact of this and check your beliefs. 

In reality if you think, we all are born with innate capacity to survive and thrive. Our children and pets too are born with that. All we need to do is trust that ability in them and allow them to taste the struggles and failures and let them learn how to deal with them. Just like a bird pushes its young one out of the nest so that it learns to fly. Because the bird know that protecting its young one for long reduces its capacity to survive in the real world. 

So my dear adults, parents, teachers and friends, let’s trust the ability to survive and protect ourselves that we all possess and be open to face any threat with courage and resilience. So, educate them to protect themselves and if needed, ask for help.  Of course you can anyways be around if it goes extreme and help them if they ask.

A day of courage to you 🤗

- Padmashree