4.6 Parental Love
“I didn’t mean that. Don’t ever let anyone tell you what you can’t do. Not even me.” – Will Smith’s character from ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’, after telling his son to forget his dream of becoming a basketball star.
Unfortunately, although it is often done with the best intention, parents are the first ones to start telling Us lies.
Children are the future and parents are their first teachers. We can make change by changing how We teach Our children. The child’s mind is the unlimited potential of imagination; the fresh canvas, the unmolded block, waiting to become anything.
I was talking to a colleague at work one day who was telling Me how much she hated her courses at school and how difficult the work was. I asked her what she was studying and she told Me she was studying to become a doctor. She was only in her last year of high school so I smiled and told her that she had better get used to it. If she didn’t like her courses now she had a long way to go and probably wouldn’t like much of what was coming. She smiled back and said, “I know but I have no choice, I have to…”
“You don’t have to do anything,” I replied. “You came here to know Your greatest dream. If this is Your greatest dream, then all the hard work will only make You appreciate becoming a doctor that much more.”
Again she laughed, “Ha! I don’t want to be a doctor; my parents want me to be a doctor.”
After a little more discussion, I learned that when she was five she had dreamed of becoming an opera singer but her parents told her it was a ridiculous dream and she should forget it. They told her that she was going to be a doctor and she has worked tirelessly at school to make her parent’s dream come true. When I told her that her dream was more important, that it was her dream she came to know, she got angry with me and told me that her religion says to respect and obey parents, so she was going to be a doctor.
Parents do this to children with the best intention, there is no doubt. This is a perfect example of how We perpetuate the reality of the world We now know. Children are very quickly robbed of their dreams while parents replace them with their own, creating their version of self the child will one day know.
There are many individuals in the world who I believe are awake to truth and use their creative talents to share it with the humanity. I believe one of these individuals is Will Smith. Examples of this are most evident in his more recent films and because I told You that Love was revealed everywhere if You choose to see it, I included the quote beginning this section to reflect an example from Hollywood.
This is truth. The child will do whatever the child believes it can do. If You want to be a great parent, do everything You can to let the child create their own dream and support it in any way possible. Remember that the belief system You allow Your child to adopt will be the reality of the world they will know. Encourage the dream and remind the child not to let anyone else ever tell them they can’t have it, no matter how difficult it may seem, especially if You don’t fully understand the power of the truth I am sharing – because the child does! Remind them that the greater the difficulty, the greater the glory of the dream they will one day know.