Yet Untitled 068 - Dissonance

On being affected by our children’s growth

Ananya, Aahana and Vani - London, c. June 2023.

Dearest Yet Untitler,

In this picture, I really like the groove my family is in - moving forward, everyone in stride. Happy.

This is from when we were on holiday recently. That holiday felt like a parenthesis drawn onto our lives, isolating where we’ve landed - especially the more positive, enjoyable aspects. The new ways in which Ananya and Aahana have come alive to the world around them in their 9th year was fascinating. Watching the world through their eyes was a wonder. The absence of a school and work routine allowed us to take this all in peacefully. On holiday, Vani and I had two small people - people with vibrant personalities - striding in step alongside us.

But that was on holiday.

Back home, in the real world, there seems to be…less flow, and more…something else.

Who are these two people and when did they move in?

The word I wanted to use above was dissonance. But it felt too strong, too sharp. Writing it down here feels honest, and I feel - amid the heightened experience of running up against their emerging personas - an urgency to explore it. Here’s the sentence again, as I had intended it:

Back home, in the real world, there seems to be less flow, and more dissonance.

Dissonance with what?

Of course, with me.

VN, c.1985

Just like everyone else, I used to be one kind of kid. In so many ways, A and A are not that kind of kid.

At a deep level, I can see that it’s affecting me. It sometimes even makes me an irritable, screaming, shouty person before them - something that I immediately regret. The dissonance is not just at the level of behavior and temperament. It’s also with their bodies, their very person.

The other day, Ananya got glasses.

It was a pretty high number, something that took us by surprise. Neither Vani nor I have myopia. Both our mothers do, but before either of us would consider the unforgiving laws of genetics, we were both entertaining irrational, negative thoughts - why her?

It strikes me that via this development, life is preparing us for something. The two people that came to the world via Vani’s womb (with a little help from me) are going to chart their own course through life no matter what we think. Their advance will have surprises, joys, sorrows, triumphs, defeats and everything else. And all of it will be uniquely their own.

It’s obvious. But I think that Vani and I are actually comprehending it now, beyond the level of theory. And it’s affecting us.

This makes me think about my amazing friend Ashley Bristowe and her book “My Own Blood”, where she deals with similar questions to those I raise here. Ashley’s battle is far more intense one - her initial why me far louder and guttural when she realised that her second child had a rare genetic disorder that hadn’t even been named yet. This amazing human being emerged from her battle shining, resplendent. It was Ashley’s lot to take on the things I only graze past here in their most expanded and terrifying form. But I feel that the world’s a better place because she fought that battle.

Coming back to the kids…

…there’s this poem I’ve been reading since I was 14…

ON CHILDREN by Kahlil Gibran

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
     And he said:
     Your children are not your children.
     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
     They come through you but not from you,
     And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
     For they have their own thoughts.
     You may house their bodies but not their souls,
     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
     You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Upon reading it again, my mind was officially blown afresh. It made so much more sense to me now.

Daisaku Ikeda - among the various roles in his life as Buddhist philosopher and philanthropist - has also been a great educator. One of the things I’ve tried to put in practice from his life is to try and speak to children after first coming down to their eye level, not while towering over them. He felt that this allowed him to speak to children as people first. People separate from myself.

Vasant with a picture of Ikeda, Shinanomachi, Tokyo, c. 2108

Doing this is tough, sometimes. Authority is easier.

But then again, I feel, therein lies the root cause of so many problems in our world.

I learn from Ikeda that peace begins at home.

Before long, A and A will be teenagers and we will be having other conversations.

Before ending, I took a moment to consider what exactly I wrote about in this installment. Perhaps what I’m writing about is the pain of growth. I come back to the photograph above. There’s no pain there; it feels like a dance where we, my family - perhaps momentarily - have found balance. Thank god for such moments. Thank god I had my camera to capture it. Thank god I wrote this installment. It’s all too easy to get lost in the moments of disorientation growth throws you into. Ah. There it is - what this installment is about. The disorientation of growth.

Whatever the theme of this freewheeling exploration may be, growth will have its difficult moment - it’s turbulence. But at some point, we’ll cruise again. And I’ll be there with my camera.

Love you all

V