Expressing of the feelings invariable of whether it is harsh or sympathetic is Emotional honesty. Emotional honesty comes from awareness which is related to intelligence which is the faculty of discrimination that has taken shape with our knowledge, practice and experience. This faulty of discrimination provides us the skill to decide whether the situation is right to be emotionally honest. Emotional honest cannot be compelled but if one is so, it will be infectious to the surrounding.
To be emotionally honest one has to be very courageous and not deter to the consequences or the aftermath. Actually we all start off by being emotionally honest at infancy stage. We are spontaneously expressive of our feelings at that age. But as time passes the child is forced by either parents or teacher to be inconsistent with its feelings. Sometimes the child is asked to behave in an adverse way which may be against its true feelings.
There was a poem in Kannada text when I was studying fifth standard titled “Govina Hadu” meaning “Song of the Cow”. The subject on Emotional Honesty makes me recollect the poem that is taught in every school through Karnataka which appreciates the virtue of truthful. I liked the story and the story is like this:
Once there was a cowherd by name Kalinga who used to take cattle for grazing in the nearby forest. Punyakoti was one of the many cows which were grazing in the idle pastures close by a dense forest. It so happened that the poor cow got lost and strayed deep into the jungle. Suddenly she was near the den of a tiger that lived in the forest and which was hungry for a week.
Smacking its lips and swishing its tail the tiger made it known to the cow that she was to be his food for the day and was about to pounce, when Punyakoti pleaded, “I have a small calf waiting for me back home. He would be hungry by now and I need to feed him. Will you please let me go home and feed him? I promise to come back after feeding him.” The tiger was puzzled. Would any prey really come back to be eaten? But Punyakoti persisted. She swore by God and Mother Earth that she would stick to the promise. Though the tiger was desperately hungry, perhaps understood a mother’s instinct, let her go but ordered her to return without delay!
Punyakoti, honest and God-fearing, hastily came to the shed, fed her calf and narrated the event to him. She told him that she had to return to the tiger as promised. The calf pleaded its mother not to go leaving him. Punyakoti told him that if she failed to return she will not be forgiven by the God for breaking the promise. Then she appeals to her sister-cows to look after orphaned child. After giving proper instructions to her calf to graze safely and move with the herd and not to straying in the forest. She returned to the forest.
Standing before the den she calls out to the tiger, “Here I am. Come, eat me and satisfy your hunger.” The tiger was touched by her honesty and moved to tears. In great remorse and realization, the tiger asks for forgiveness and jumps off the cliff to death.
How many children are taught these kinds of lessons in schools OR as a parent how many of us want our children to know these things of morality????? Also most important is that in our worldly life we as parents our honesty is inconsistent. If the children observe this it is most dangerous scenario. Children are most keen observers and grasp whatever the parents do. Children below adolescent age are very pure and will put out their feelings without hesitation. It is wise for the parents to let them behave like that and once they become adolescents they begin to use their own intelligence and decide on what is right.
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