As parents it is paramount that we bring our children up in loving surroundings with strong connections to family and the wider family. These same connections, these same attachments will be what forms the strong bond or cord that keeps our children in touch with their feelings, in touch with their heart, in touch with their oneness to others.
If you read about Adolf Hitler, people see him as an awful cruel man, and the atrocities he committed certainly were awful and cruel, but when you read about his childhood, you start to realise why he turned out the way he did and that he had no real connection to his mother, he was abused by his father and grew up shut off from his heart as a way of a survival strategy. He grew up in a cold unconnected family and where there is no love can you really expect him to grow up much different?
However, on saying this, this does not make excuses for the atrocities that Adolf committed, but what it does do is give us an explanation and helps us to understand the recipe for such coldness. We all have our own pains we have endured from childhood, some would seem much more than others, but at the end of the day we all have a choice as to whether or not we allow our past to define us, whether we permit the pains of childhood to be the pains of our adulthood. We are all faced with a choice as to whether we learn from the past or repeat the past. Every child needs nurturing and it is the parents or caregivers responsibility to ensure that they nurture the children in order to increase their chances of being a more balanced and loving individual.
But it isn’t just the responsibility of the parents or caregivers; on a wider scale it is also the responsibility of the culture we live in, in the society that feeds into each and every child as to what and how they must be and culture and society don’t always get it right, what is right for one may not be right for another. Society has a vital role in the upbringing of children and the way they turn out, whether good or bad, we only have to look at the negative impact of gangs to realise that whether positive or negative, society does have an impact and when there is so much pressure to be part of a gang, how many children are strong enough to swim against the tide and say no.
In a culture of excessive drugs and alcoholism, how many children no matter what age are strong enough to say no. That strength comes from being part of a loving family, it is from feeling connected that keeps them safe and held. When children feel accepted and loved in their home, they have the strength to say no because they are not looking for approval from others, they are not looking for acceptance, they are not looking to fit in.
We all come into contact with children, usually on a daily basis, we have ample opportunity to put something good into the lives of children, but how many of us do? We all have daily opportunities to show the young ones of today, which are today’s seeds and tomorrows flowers, tomorrow’s leaders, how to live a compassionate life, but how many of us do? How many of us struggle with our own lack of compassion, lack of love, lack of self-respect, lack of self-acceptance? If we cannot respect and accept ourselves how on earth are we going to learn to respect and accept another?
As in all things it comes down to you, to me, to us, it comes down to each one of us individually to collectively raise a nation that fosters love and compassion over hate and cold bloodiness. We are all part of the plan. So often we can’t see past today, we can’t see further than our own nose, our lives have become so busy, for many just getting through today is a victory, but I’m here to tell you today, that isn’t enough, we have to sow into tomorrow’s adults, we have to sow into those who will one day be looking after us, who will one day be having children of their own, who will one day be the leaders of our community, our culture, our nation. What we sow today we will reap tomorrow, perhaps we should all take a long look at our own lives and ask ourselves:
What more can I do to improve society, to improve the culture I live in, to improve my family connections?
Love and compassion starts in the home, it starts in the home of your own heart and spreads through the rest of your family and out into the wider family.
When we look back at the information offered on Adolf, it shows that at a young age he wanted to become a priest but was not permitted to be one, he later wanted to follow his dream of being an artist, but that also was blocked, if we permit ourselves the time to ponder on his life, we may be able to envisage a different Adolf had he been able to follow that which he wanted to be; we will never truly know if becoming a priest would have met all his needs and if so, what difference it may have made to his world and to the world. People are not born bad, they are made bad, partly due to family, partly due to society and culture and partly due to their own inner issues.
Let us wake up today and start to take more responsibility for what we are creating in and around our lives, let us wake up today and start to take more responsibility for the children, for what we plant into them, they need our guidance, we can’t always change the past, but we can change and influence the future if we just start to make some small incremental changes in our own lives and the lives of those around us.
Let us not let another day pass without consciously looking at what we are putting out into the universe, what we are teaching this and future generations.
Allow the compassion of Christ to flow through you each and every day of your life, allow the love that God has shown for you to flow, not to you but through you.
Always Walk in Peace – Kenzo
