Human beings have many memorable events in their lives. They learn from them and these kinds of experiences play a great role in the development of the personality. I want to share one of such events with you.
I was living in Lahore (a city in Pakistan) when it happened. As a tradition of Lahori people, we celebrate a festival at the beginning of the spring season, which falls in the middle of the February, called “Basant”. People fly Kites as a mark of celebration.
When I was a child of ten years, I was much fascinated by these colorful kites and wanted to fly them because I used to see my brother, cousins, uncle and my father flying kites. One day I told my father that I wanted to learn how to fly kites. He said to me that if you really want to, you should first observe us, and that way he started to develop my observation. After many days, he gave me a kite and its thread and asked me to try it according to my observation. He helped me a bit and I tried many times, but in vain. Then he advised me to fly it according to the wind. I did as he told and my kite became stable and flew higher and higher. That moment’s happiness and joy I can never forget and I can still feel it whenever I reminisce about it.
Suddenly I saw another kite coming towards mine. I shouted for help and my father told me how to save my kite, to attack the other kite from beneath. That had been my first experience about how someone can come out of the blue to ruin a perfect moment of happiness in life. I was extremely upset and at that moment my father gave an invaluable advice, “This is life, my dear. Always keep an eye on your surroundings but never trouble anyone. What you do not like for yourself, do not do that to others and at the time of difficulty be brave and face it bravely”.
After this event I learnt that everything that happens in life has a lesson. All you need is an open mind and a mentor, like my father was to me, in order to learn the little yet invaluable lessons of life.
My father left no stone unturned in developing my habit of getting lessons from day to day life events. Another lesson which he taught me was to give our things to others and relish in their happiness. We would spend the whole day catching and collecting kites, and in the end he would give them away to my cousins and neighbor’s and advise us to sacrifice our things for the happiness of others.
Kite flying in Lahore
Great post Annie :) I think some of our most memorable learning moments are with close family members. Mine was with my grandfather building and renovating houses. I learned a skill and derived great satisfaction in working with him. Wonderful post, I look forward to reading more of your thoughts in the future.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post Annie. I also agree that we can learn many lessons from life's day to day events. I also think it interesting that you learned both by observation and then by practice and then applied those lessons to a wider context.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this post. One other lesson I pulled from it is that sometimes you just can't impose your will on a situation, you have to shape yourself to the context and then you can achieve your goals. In this case, you learned to adjust yourself to the wind instead of trying to convince the wind to adjust to your actions. This is a lesson I have had to relearn again and again.
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