……and, another bright spark - on teaching kids

When you came to me, you were exquisitely beautiful. So much so that I could not look past your beauty for a long, long, time - it held me in thrall, captive. In one sense, I could look past everything else about you - your smallness, your untidiness, your nano-second attention span, your inability to sit still at all, your loudness, your default disobedience, EVERYTHING. Initially, for a long, long time, I completely forgot I had to teach you something, because your beauty just captured my heart.

You touched my heart very deeply by just being around, many, many times. When we spoke, I didn’t remember much of WHAT we spoke as much as the fact THAT we spoke. I loved the way your eyes lit up like bright twinkling points in the night whenever something caught your sense of wonder. I loved how you went berserk when your mind actually grasped something, even something minor and trivial (like how the wheels of a bus go round, for example).

You fulfilled me without having to do anything; there was nothing imperfect about you. Nothing. You were always the highlight of the day, the thing that made me smile even when other things and adults constantly wore me down. You became, in a manner of speaking, an idol.

For a long time, it became enough for me just to see you everyday, to spend time with you, to watch you grow. I wanted to be there for all the changes that came with growth.

It was only when I reflected on the fact that you were meant to grow, that I came to my senses. I realised I had been given you so that I could help you grow. I began to realise hard, cold facts like you needed me, in one sense, far, far more than I needed you. You weren’t there for my enjoyment or pleasure (though you certainly succeeded at that without even trying) - you were there because I, the adult, had something really pivotal and essential that you needed to grow, which I had to give you so that I give an account to the One Who gave me that thing.

It was then that I realised that it had become selfish of me to want you to be with me, and yet not give you the very thing I had that you needed. In idolising you, I had thought only of myself, not of you. Then I also remembered how innocent you were, and then I fell into deep anguish that I had, in fact, used you instead of helping you grow. I had failed! It was crushing to realise that only I could give you what I had, and I had been consistently failing to give it to you.

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At that time, I thought I must give up because I was so angry at myself; and I saw you, in all your beauty, now with the imperfection of lack - you lacked what only I in this whole world could give you, and your growth was stunted because I hadn’t done for you what I was supposed to do.

I thank God above that I did not wallow selfishly, thinking only of myself; had I done that, you might have remained imperfect and stunted the rest of your life, because only I could give you what I was supposed to give you. No one else could have done that for you. 

I thank God that the deep, deep love I had developed for you came to my rescue. It goaded me into action; I realised that I wasn’t supposed to leave you the way you were when you first came to me; that would be a far worse sin than my selfishness with you had been.

I saw that my love for you must find fulfillment in my heart, for me too, because it wasn’t entirely a selfish love. 

I then resolved to never leave you until I had given you what I was supposed to give; to stop using you and start giving to you.

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THEN began the process of trying to give you what I had been ordained to give you. In those days it became very hard indeed; and I must say you made it no easier for me. I now began to see your bewitching beauty as something indeed bewitching beyond bearing - the temptation to be selfish was always there, waiting to move in. I also found that in your innocence, you had no idea what I was supposed to give you; and you were constantly in the way of receiving what I had to give you without even meaning to do so. You began to frustrate me - sometimes you pushed me away and cried.

I realised you wouldn’t be able to help me fulfil my love for you in any way. Then many things that had at first endeared you to me now upset me beyond bearing because they were, stubbornly yet innocently, hindrances to your ability to receive. I realised how hard my task really was; my eyes had indeed opened.

I just stuck to it because of my love for you. I had a mission, and I would not quit no matter how hard it got because that’s what friends do for each other. I put my nose to the grindstone and started the long and lonely trudge to the real you, hidden deep inside you, that was able to receive what I had to give.

Sometimes you helped, but most times you were just unable because you were just growing. But I still remember your affection and your love that you showed many a time, all innocently and always without warning; these in no small way made everything easier, and more than easier, WORTH IT.

Sometimes it was like the early days, when you would go absolutely and uncontrollably berserk when you received a bit of what I was giving you and knew it; you understood. At other times, I softly cried that you thought I was such a nuisance and so hurtful to you. Growth hurts, we both realised.

I just want to tell you this - I would do it again for you if I had to, without batting an eyelid.

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The whole thing was almost chemical, electronic even, maybe there was a robotic element to it. I realised that you had switches, just like I did. What I had to do was find them for you and turn them on, because you couldn’t do that by yourself. 

But you were this impossible, bumbling, energy-dripping bouncing ball which I could not hold down, and even when I could physically get you, I could not engage that mind of yours!

I had to engage that mind - or, no matter how close I came, all my efforts, all the years, would have been useless. USELESS! The thought chilled me.

So I did a number on you. I FOUND ways to get into your mind and there I searched frantically for those switches. WHERE WERE THEY?

You kids bury those switches. I have to tell you that now, after all these years. The maddening thing is that you hardly know how you do it, yet you do it expertly even so.

Then I realised that you buried the switches because other adults failed you. It was the only escape hatch you had been given to protect yourself from harmful people. The harmful people, far from loving you or doing their duty to you, just filled you with layers of dirt. Just plain ‘unadulterated’ dirt. This dirt made you behave really strangely - first, you buried the switches, then you began to hide clues too. Sometimes even the scars would disappear, leaving me with nowhere to start.

So I began digging. I held you close and felt fiercely protective, so fiercely that it began to cost me. I didn’t care what it cost. I just went on doing my work. Layer after layer, red herring after another, false positive after another.

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So you want to know where this story ends?

Today you walked in to my class. After half a century, maybe. You were not beautiful, at least not in the way you had been when I first saw you. That made sense - you were now an adult.

But you were complete, in a way that you had never been in those years. And being complete made you beautiful in a whole new way.

I know this because you told me things about those years that I had been unable to see even then - the fact that I had finally been able to find the switches; and indeed helped you turn them on. And the light that flooded into you carried you through life, and here you were, telling me so - after half a century.

You asked me what I saw in you during those years, that I never stopped working on you. I really don’t know, I said. I just did what I had to do because I loved you and understood what I had been placed in your life to do. In fact I neither remember at what point I found the switches, nor turned them on. I guess once I found them, you turned them on yourself. It was easy THEN - child’s play, so to speak.

And here you stand, speaking highly of me. Now. Half a century later.

I didn’t tell you, but I will sleep easier tonight, because I can rest knowing I finally gave you what only I could give you; and you received it, and accepted it. But it’s more than that. Much more. 

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In the dark, in bed, I thought about you. The years rolled back. At one point, in those years, I had only been painfully aware that you needed me and I should not fail you; but tonight I realised that I had needed you too. Not in the selfish way I remember back then, but maturely - to help me grow, just as I was supposed to help you grow. I realised that, had I failed you, we’d both be incomplete today, and that would have been a cosmic tragedy - true failure without remedy.

And I lie here and think of all those who came before you and after you; some, I succeeded, some I failed. I’m only human. The awesome thing is that there were others like you, each one as special as you; though none as special in the same way as you. Pleasantly, yet strangely, even among a constellation of ones like you, each of you remains individually special, and uniquely so.

Thank you for helping me. I want you to know that I would do all of it all over again should you need it, no matter what it would cost me.