The World Where Our Memories Live

I have been thinking about memories. When I say memories, I mean those instances in our lives that we remember vividly: moments that shaped us into who we are today.

A fundamental question about these moments (or memories) is whether they existed in the past or whether they exist in the present.

And, is there a world where memories are a living reality because both the past and the present combine into what is truly present?

It’s interesting (at least to me) how I came to think about these questions. As I sat in the fourth row at an orchestra playing Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, I found myself closing my eyes and listening to every rhythm of this masterful piece, especially the second movement. Never have I listened to anything so beautiful, so vivid.

As I closed my eyes and listened, I found myself transported (without any ticket collector asking for a ticket) to a world of my own memories. It was a surreal feeling. Here I am, sitting in a beautiful hall with my wife and mother, but I am also not here.

Has it ever happened that you feel you are in two places at the same time? I am certain that I was.

As I sat in my chair, I saw myself traversing the times of my childhood. I saw that I am an invisible bird that is observing the younger me. I am not directly above – not at a perfect ninety-degree angle – but somewhere at an acute angle to myself. This bird, that is me, is trying to feel what this child – again, me – is feeling.

She is watching me so that she can tell the man listening what it is that I have been doing or feeling in that moment. Does that make sense? Maybe it does not, but that is okay. I am sure that not many people in their lives have had such an experience where they could feel themselves coming out of their body, going back in time, observing themselves flying overhead to observe themselves! It sounds absurd, right?

Yet here I am. The bird sees my father’s dead body being taken away as I, a boy of six years, played with my Lego-type toys surrounded by crying older women. She sees me on a hot summer day, coddled in my sunny storeroom, waiting for my mother to come back home from the office so that I can run to her. The bird sees me sweating profusely in that sweltering summer heat, believing that this is the way of life where you are supposed to shed that salty water every day, all day. She sees me being teased and molested. She sees me flying kites. She sees me playing rugby as a fourteen-year-old, with my friends in school, being extremely happy.

That bird sees me, and she sees many more moments; some make me teary-eyed, some make me smile.

If you listen to the second movement by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, you will understand what I am talking about. The ebbs and flows of the movement take anyone listening intently into the life they have lived so far and bring to their mind the freshness of the life we call the past. It brings to the surface things that matter to them, both good and bad, and that is the beauty of what Tchaikovsky put into this extraordinary piece of music.

I realised that I have been flying from one moment to another. Not that I had wings whatsoever, but I did have the power to move from one memory to another very quickly. Even though I did not have the power to choose which memory I wanted to visit next, I had the power to stop myself if I wanted to.

I held the strings to the bird’s flight, but I chose to let it fly.

The bird traversed places, and it moved across time. And as it did, I continued to feel the warmth of my chair, the touch of my wife’s hands, and the presence of my mother next to me.

The core of my being was travelling across time and space, and the medium was music. As I visited these moments, the warmth of my tears caressed my cheeks. The bird and I wondered whether to control this warmth spreading through me, but we decided not to.

I was there.

Right there.

As the symphony ended, I came back to my current reality. With tears in my eyes and a heart full of gratitude, I had relived those precious moments of my life.

But what struck me most was the vividness of what I had just been. Not what I thought I saw but what I was: a bird, travelling within the depths of my own being.

I started with the question of whether there is a world where memories are a living reality. I think there is, because I am sure I had flown there.

Anne and a boy writing in their diaries together

A Good Life, Ideas

To Live and Die Is to Express – Lessons from a Diary

The Question of Purpose

Purpose is such an intriguing word. Why do we choose to do the things we do in life? My dearest friend who dreams of becoming a filmmaker recently asked why he should bother pursuing anything worthwhile—or even something he loves—when, in the end, we all have to die?

It’s a profound question, one without a single, simple answer. Yet, few stories and moments often help us glimpse possible responses. For me, one such answer revealed itself in the pages of Anne Frank’s diary, written by a young Jewish girl who perished in the Holocaust during World War II.

Meeting Anne for the First Time

Called The Diary of a Young Girl, I first came across this book when I was just starting to explore the world of reading as a young eighteen-year-old. I remember trying to read it then, but as the saying goes, “you don’t choose your books; they choose you”— and in that moment, the book had decided to reject me.

I don’t know why I felt compelled to return to this book at this moment in my life. The thought about my life’s purpose shouldn’t be the cause because I do feel certain of it—to improve the lives of millions of underprivileged children in India—and yet, I still found myself drawn back to these pages.

Maybe it was a quiet intuition, or perhaps a kind of divine signal, that led me to it. I simply felt drawn to discover what this young girl of thirteen had written in those 330-odd pages before she and her family were taken from their hidden refuge and sent to the concentration camps. This time, the book let me in. And it has already changed my life.

Finding Myself in Anne’s Writings

Reading Anne’s diary made me think back about the time I had started to write my own diary (later discontinued) when I was in Grade 7 or 8—around the same age as Anne. Of course, in hindsight, what I was going through as a twelve-year-old was in no way close to what Anne endured. She was hiding from the Nazis inside a secret annexe in the middle of a war, unable to step outside, while I was simply navigating the small-er dramas of adolescence. But as a teenager, “your” challenges feel most important to you.

Perspective-taking and empathy takes time. Evidence from child psychology hints that empathy and perspective-taking continue to develop into the teenage years, with notable patterns emerging especially during the late adolescent period.

A six-year longitudinal study following adolescents from ages 13 to 18 found that perspective-taking increased consistently across adolescence, indicating that the ability to adopt others’ viewpoints develops substantially during the teenage years and continues to strengthen into late adolescence (Van der Graaff et al., 2013).

While perspective-taking shows steady growth, empathy itself follows a more complex developmental path.

A study summarized by Melbourne Child Psychology reported that cognitive empathy—the capacity to understand another’s perspective—emerges earlier for girls, beginning around age 13, while boys typically do not show similar growth until about age 15. By contrast, affective empathy, which reflects the emotional responsiveness to others, tends to dip in boys between ages 13 and 16 before rebounding later in adolescence, suggesting a temporary decline followed by recovery in emotional empathy during the teenage years (Melbourne Child Psychology, n.d.).

The beauty of Anne’s diary is that you can actually witness this growth many years before this research was contemporary. Between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, her writing reflects a deepening perspective and a widening empathy—especially in the way her relationship with her mother evolves. She begins with sharp criticism, often feeling misunderstood, but over time her words soften, carrying traces of compassion and self-awareness.

Shared Struggles of Adolescence

In Anne’s struggles, and growth, I found echoes of my own teenage self. Like Anne, I too wrestled with the urge to be independent—“please let me be… leave me alone!” I felt the need to push away adults—“I am my own person… don’t tell me what to do!” I carried confusing feelings about the opposite gender—“What is this feeling… am I in love?” And I wanted nothing more than to be seen as honest—“Don’t ever tell me that I lie…”

There were other areas of resonance too: Anne didn’t like Algebra, neither did I. Anne loved reading and thinking deeply about human emotions—so did I. Anne wanted to become a writer or a journalist—so did I. And despite the Nazis’ annihilation of the Jews, Anne believed in the good in people. So did I.

The Power of Expression

But there was more than resonance that made Anne’s life special and why she was different than everyone her age (and beyond) those days and today. She was special because she chose to give value to how she was feeling—and to express it with what she had in that moment. For her, that meant words. Unknowingly, she had found a purpose. And that made her immortal.

The most wonderful thing about reading her diary is that you don’t feel that she was writing for the world. Living a double life —on one side she could be caught at any moment, and on the other she might survive the war—she still kept on writing for herself. She wrote to understand herself, to become better.

And that’s what makes her lesson so powerful. As individuals, what we go through every day often seems too ordinary. It doesn’t feel important. We convince ourselves that in the noise of the world, our feelings and stories don’t matter. For the longest time—maybe even for our entire lives—we ask: who will hear what we have to say?

The fact that Anne must have felt this too, but still chose to express, is what makes her life and her story so extraordinary.

Time: Endless and Fleeting

There isn’t much time left. There is a lot of time left. Which statement do you think is true? Believing that we may die in the next moment—courtesy of life’s unpredictability—the first feels true. Believing that we have years ahead, the second feels true as well. The fact is that both statements are true at the same time.

The double-truths resemble Schrödinger’s cat—the famous thought experiment where a cat could be considered both alive and dead at the same time

As humans, we know deep down that our lives are totally unpredictable. We can go poof anytime. Still, we go on thinking that we have an “entire” life in front of us—until it is not. And when we believe our lives to be eternal, we postpone expressing our deepest feelings. We forget to tell others—and, most importantly, ourselves—what we truly think.

The Choice to Express

And yet, Anne did not forget or postpone. She wrote. She expressed. Even in the confines of an attic, even in the face of constant fear, she chose to give her feelings a voice. And through that simple, honest act, she continues to live.

That, to me, is Anne’s greatest gift: a reminder that expression itself can be purpose. It doesn’t have to be grand, it doesn’t have to be meant for the world—it just has to be true.

So, just like Anne, we too must continue to express, in whatever way we can. For some, that might mean writing; for others, it could be painting, singing, filming (my friend), teaching, or even simply speaking honestly to a friend. Expression doesn’t have to be grand—it just has to be true.

For me, that means writing more, and making space for my thoughts to breathe on paper (and online). It has now become not just an act, but an added purpose of my life. And perhaps, in doing so, I will leave behind a small echo—one that says: I too lived, I too expressed.

So let me ask you—when your time comes, will the world know that you lived, because you expressed?

REFERENCES

Van der Graaff, J., Branje, S., De Wied, M., Hawk, S., Van Lier, P., & Meeus, W. (2013). Perspective taking and empathic concern in adolescence: Gender differences in developmental changes. Developmental Psychology. Link
Melbourne Child Psychology. (n.d.). Helping Teenagers Develop Empathy. Link

A Good Life

Why I may never send my kids to school

Three seismic forces are reshaping the modern world, altering not only our societies but also the futures of our children. These shifts—political, technological, and emotional—demand that we rethink how we live, work, and raise the next generation.

1. The Age of Certain Uncertainty

The world is becoming increasingly unpredictable and protectionist. Much of this shift stems from the rise of leaders who govern through personal vendettas and act on conspiracy theories driven by the “viral” culture on social media. The lines between truth and falsehood are increasingly blurred. In the new world, where any action can be deemed harmful depending on who wields power, becoming positively invisible is a kind of a superpower.

Deep thinking itself is becoming rare. Science has been pushed to the margins, replaced by spectacle and noise. Reading—once the quiet foundation of informed societies—is also in decline. As data journalist David Montgomery notes in his analysis, “just over half of all Americans said they read at least one book in 2023,” and of those, an overwhelming 82% read ten or fewer. These are shocking numbers that show deep, sustained engagement with ideas is rapidly disappearing. Similar trends can be observed in other parts of the world.

My point is, that as humans, we are prioritizing surface level understanding driven by byte-sized dopamine-laced information over in-depth understanding.

2. The AI Moment

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the very way we think about our education and work. As our capacity for deep engagement diminishes, the rise of AI adds another layer of disruption—challenging not just what we learn, but how we learn. For example: with AI’s advent, no longer do we need to polish our handwriting skills (remember the handwriting competitions that used to happen in schools?) or our typing skills (the typing speed tests?) on a computer.

The challenge is no longer about rote skills but about asking the right questions, synthesizing knowledge, and shaping work that feels meaningful to each individual. All of this requires critical thinking about who we are, what we want in life, and what makes our lives meaningful.

Crucially, education and work are no longer bound to a single location; they can flow from anywhere, as long as we bring creativity and purpose to it.

3. A Pandemic of Loneliness

Despite unprecedented global connectivity, people are lonelier than ever. In their groundbreaking book “The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness”, researchers from Harvard’s Study of Adult Development report that about one in four Americans—over sixty million people—say they feel lonely. According to the book, the problem is not confined to the United States. In China, loneliness among older adults has surged in recent years, while in Great Britain the crisis has grown so acute that the government has appointed a “minister of loneliness.” The Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI)—surveying nearly 72,000 adults aged 45 and older—found that 20.5% reported feeling moderate loneliness, while 13.3% experienced severe loneliness.

The new paradox of our age is that while technology promises us to connect with people and make our lives easy, we are feeling more isolated within ourselves. Loneliness, left unaddressed, drains life of its meaning. The recent experience of Covid has also made individuals wonder about their priorities in life with more people wanting to spend time with their loved ones.

Schools in the Shadow of These Shifts

Under the umbrella of these sweeping changes, I wonder how do we raise our children to become thoughtful, kind, resilient and happy individuals capable of leading good and meaningful lives? Increasingly, I wonder if sending them to schools—at least as they currently exist—is the right choice.

Most of us know that the modern school system is, in many ways, a relic of the British-led Industrial Revolution. Its structure— rows of desks, bells that mimic factory whistles, standardized curricula, over-emphasis on English language—was designed to produce compliant thinking in students. But the world of tomorrow does not need compliant workers; it needs independent thinkers, creative builders, and empathetic humans.

Encouragingly, some countries are beginning to recognize this. India’s National Education Policy 2020, for instance, calls for a shift away from rote memorization toward play-based learning, conceptual understanding, and exposure to diverse languages and experiences. It’s a step toward reimagining schools as places that nurture curiosity and creativity rather than conformity—though the gap between policy and practice remains.

Schools today are also starting to overindulge in digital tools without teaching children how to counter their ill-effects. Instead of protecting kids from distraction, they amplify it. Teachers distracted by phones, lessons funneled through screens, and students scrolling endlessly erode the very capacities our children need most: concentration, patience, and long-form reasoning.

As one recent New York Times essay put it, the smartphone has become a direct assault on literacy, democracy, and our ability to think clearly. Documentaries like Adolescence on Netflix highlight just how devastating digital overexposure can be while schools remain ill-equipped to shield them.

Defining a Good Life

Every time I reflect on these issues (mostly with my wife), we arrive at an unsettling conclusion: perhaps sending our future children to schools, as they currently exist, may not be the best choice.

At the heart of this reflection, pressed against the changes in the current world, is our own definition of a good life—one we wish to pass on to our children. For me, it has three components.

First, relationships. Decades of research confirm that good relationships—with family, friends, spouses, and even colleagues—are the single strongest predictor of happiness and well-being (for more, read The Good Life). While schools predominately focus on reading, writing, and giving subject-matter knowledge, they rarely teach the art of building and sustaining relationships.

In fact, I wonder: since educated parents already take responsibility for giving their children the knowledge and skills they need, and now have tools like AI to help, why should kids still have to sit in rigid classrooms away from their parents, siblings or grandparents? Parents who are busy or less educated may still need schools to teach their kids, but today there’s little reason for educated parents to do the same if they have the time and resources – both human and monetary.

Also, if Covid taught us anything, it is that time with our loved ones is finite and precious. I want our children to grow up experiencing family not as something squeezed into evenings and weekends, but as a central pillar of their lives.

One can argue that schools are where children socialize and make friends for lifetime. There is merit in this argument. However, in today’s world, children can still make friends outside traditional schools—through smaller, interest-driven communities that foster deeper bonds. They can participate in smaller group activities aligned with their deep interests at time and place of their choosing.

Imagine a child beginning the day in meditation with peers, playing football or tennis in the afternoon, and ending with a book discussion with another set of friends. Now imagine the next day where the child decides to spend the entire day with their grandparents reading books. Such interest-driven communities and choices build agency, decision-making, and collaboration—qualities schools often replace with competition and comparison.

Second, if relationships anchor happiness, meaningful work anchors purpose. With AI and robotics taking over much of the routine labor, what remains for humans is the pursuit of purpose. Our children will need to do the work they love—work that not only sustains them but also contributes something positive to the world.

Schools, however, are still preparing students for industries of the past, where conformity and compliance mattered more than creativity and passion. To identify and do meaningful work, what is needed is self-reflection and self-understanding of the highest order. As kids remain outside the ambit of the traditional schools, they have a better chance of developing these higher order tools.

Third, the power of digital invisibility. A recent estimate shows that people worldwide are spending more than six hours every day on screens. And that spending time online makes us feel more anxious, fearful and lonely. Factor in eight hours of required sleep and another eight of obligatory work or schooling, and what remains is a mere two hours a day—just one-twelfth of our lives—for reflection, relationships, and meaning – things that make a good life.

To spend nearly 90% of our waking life in distraction and compliance is to squander life itself.

Personally, I do not want my children to spend six hours a day exposed to digital devices that make them anxiously visible to the world and vulnerable for manipulation. And unless today’s schools truly change and realign towards helping children lead a good life, I do not want our children to spend another eight hours of their youth training to be compliant workers.

Instead, I want them to spend those fourteen hours with family, with friends, with books, and with themselves. I want them to become invisible to the noise of the world so that they may be visible in the lives of those who truly love them.

I would rather raise children who are fully alive than children who are merely schooled. And that is why I may never send mine to a school.

A Good Life, Humanity’s Future

Fear Is Learned — And We Can Choose Not to Pass it on

One sunny afternoon, as my wife was working on one of her academic papers, she told me she had been feeling fearful — of the writing process, and of the feedback she might receive from her guide and the scientific community. When I asked why she felt this way despite being well prepared, she admitted that, even now, she sometimes experiences the same fears she had as a child. It wasn’t failure she was afraid of, but the possibility of not producing a paper that was perfect.

Many of the fears we carry into adulthood are not entirely our own. They are echoes — internalized through childhood experiences, social environments, and often, the unspoken anxieties of those who raised us. Psychological research shows that fear responses are not purely innate; they are also socially learned and transmitted across generations (Gerull & Rapee, 2002).

Her story reflects this truth: fears from childhood often remain embedded in adulthood and if not acted upon can be traversed to our next generation i.e. our kids.

These fears can emerge from multiple sources –

Direct and deep personal experiences (e.g., repeated punishment, ridicule) as a child;
Socio-economic circumstances (e.g., scarcity, instability);
Educational environment (e.g., high-stakes grading, unsupportive teachers);

One of the most common ways children internalize fears is through parental modeling — observing and adopting their parents’ anxieties. I will focus primarily on this aspect in this piece.

This is part of a writing series I am calling “Notes to my child” where I am trying to document my thoughts and strategies of raising my future kids and sharing these with my co-travelers.

Positive vs Negative Fear

Let me also clarify that no parents actively try to make their children fearful or pick up their anxieties. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Both as current or future parents, it’s important that we raise our children without unnecessary fear. This is harder to do than it sounds.

Positive fear is necessary. It helps a child survive in this world. It ensures that they don’t poke their fingers inside the electric switch board or stand, smiling, in front of a pouncing lion.

While positive fear can be considered as a “built-in alarm system”, the negative fear is a “built-out, overactive alarm system”. It goes off even when there’s no real danger.

	Negative Fear	Positive Fear
Purpose	Control-oriented, performance-pressured, or socially conditioned	Protective, survival-oriented
Effect	Limits growth, creativity, and willingness to take healthy risks	Keeps us safe from real, immediate danger
Examples	Fear of making mistakes in public Fear of being judged or criticized Fear of trying something new unless it’s “perfect”	Fear of touching a live electrical wire Fear of walking too close to the edge of a cliff Fear of running into a lion
Outcome	Can lead to procrastination, avoidance, and low confidence. It often lingers long after the actual risk has passed.	Helps avoid physical harm or serious risk. Once the danger is gone, the fear subsides.

A Thought Experiment: Three Parenting Advice

How does this negative fear get transferred from parents to children then?
Let’s try to understand this with the help of a thought experiment:

Imagine a ten-year old child who has been asked to speak in a school assembly on the topic of “cleanliness”. The child comes home and tell this to his parents. The parents help prepare him a paragraph on the topic and asks him to practice.

Imagine this child being raised by three different set of parents: Parents 1, 2, and 3. Each set of parent gives different set of instructions and/or set different expectations for their child.

Parent 1: “You have to make sure that you remember everything by heart and don’t forget anything while you speak. It has to be perfect and according to what we taught you. Remember practice makes a man perfect! The way you perform in pressure situations will indicate how well you will do later in similar situations in life.”

Parent 2: “It’s good that you remember everything and we hope that you will be able to speak what you have prepared. It might happen that you forget a few things while on stage but you should remember the overall message on cleanliness that you want to convey! Good luck!”

Parent 3: “We don’t think that you need to prepare anything for such a simple topic or that you need any help from us. Just go and speak what you think comes to your mind. Just remember to not say anything stupid. Anyway, we don’t have much time to give.”

Now, the next day, the child performance, on a parameter of 100% perfection was, lets say, 80%. He forgets something during their speech but manage to put up with the task. How do you imagine Parent 1, 2 and 3 to react? I believe it will be something like this –

Parent 1: “You forgot the last line we practiced! We told you exactly how to say it. You need to prepare more seriously next time — mistakes like this can be avoided.”

I will call this type of response as a “Perfection-Driven Response. Research says that, for example, “fathers of high socially anxious children exhibited more controlling behaviors. (Flett et al., 2002).”

Parent 2:
“You spoke well! You missed a few points, but you got the message across — that’s what matters. Next time, you can add those points too.”

I will call this type of response as a “Encouragement-Centered Response.” Research says that Growth-oriented feedback fosters resilience and intrinsic motivation. Carol Dweck’s work in this regard is path-breaking where she speaks on growth vs fixed mindset.

Parent 3:
“At least you didn’t embarrass yourself. See? It wasn’t that big a deal.”

I will call this type of response as a “Hands-Off Response.” Research says that emotional neglect or low parental engagement can reduce self-efficacy and ambition.

What do you think were the child’s takeaways from each parent’s responses and how these takeaways would echo in children’s adult life?

Here’s my take –

Parent Reactions	Child’s Takeaway	Adult echo
*Perfection-Driven*	My value depends on meeting the exact expectations set for me. If I miss a detail, I’ve failed in the eyes of my parents. The society must also consider me a failure because my parents think so too. I must avoid mistakes at all costs.	I can’t start unless I’m sure it will be perfect. Any imperfection is a failure.
*Encouragement-Centered*	Mistakes happen, but they don’t erase the value of what I’ve done. My job is to convey the essence, even if it’s not perfect. The society must be more willing to accept my mistakes in the future which helps me in taking more risks in life.	I can try things even if they’re not perfect. Progress matters more than perfection.
*Hands-Off*	What I do isn’t important enough for support. As long as I avoid humiliation, it’s fine. The society doesn’t care much what I do or not do. As long as I don’t come out as stupid, it should be fine.	Why bother striving? Just avoid looking bad and get it over with.

Breaking the Cycle

Objectively speaking, each child received same results. But it received different reactions by parents resulting into starkly different takeaways by the child. These takeaways, and many such similar experiences through parental interactions, starts to define a child’s personality including their anxieties and fears.

Breaking this cycle of inherited fear requires conscious, consistent effort as an adult. This becomes even more critical if as parents we want our children to lead lives without any kind of negative fears.

Some strategies include (but not limited to):

Self-Awareness First – As adults, we should start by identifying our own learned fears before addressing them with children. Activities such as reflective journaling, therapy, and mindfulness can help uncover inherited anxiety patterns.
Modeling Self-Compassion – Most of the time, adults are too hard on themselves and they forget to treat themselves with self-compassion. It’s important that adults treat both their and children’s errors as learning opportunities rather than proof of inadequacy. Modeling self-compassion in front of children reduces their fear of failure.
Encourage Process Over Perfection – Praise effort, strategies, and persistence instead of flawless outcomes.
Provide Emotional Safety – Create environments where children feel safe to try, fail, and try again without ridicule or disproportionate punishment.
Educate on Fear Itself – Teach children the biological purpose of fear and how to distinguish between positive fear (real danger) and negative fear (false alarms).

We can’t shield children from all fear — nor should we. But we can prevent unnecessary fears from taking root. That means being mindful of the lessons we give, both in words and in the silences between them. By practicing these habits, we reduce the risk of passing on our own fears and anxieties — giving children the space to develop confidence, adaptability, and a healthy relationship with imperfection.

Whenever my wife finally submits her paper, I hope that she smiles and says, ‘It’s not perfect — but it’s done.’ The courage she will learn is the courage that I’d want our children to inherit.

References

Gerull, F. C., & Rapee, R. M. (2002). Mother knows best: Effects of maternal modeling on the acquisition of fear and avoidance behaviour in toddlers. Behaviour Research and Therapy. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(01)00013-4

Flett, G. L., Hewitt, P. L., Oliver, J. M., & Macdonald, S. (2002). Perfectionism in children and their parents: Associations with depression, anxiety, and everyday distress. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment.
https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020779000183

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Random House.

Two parents, likely Indian origin, holds hands of their two young children.

A Good Life

The Kind of Love That Raises Us—and the Kind We Choose to Give

We don’t usually internalize this but, I think, we are, for most part, exactly like our parents. The debate between nature vs nurture in playing a pivotal role in building our adult personalities is an old one. Earlier, during my twenties, I had a firm belief that nature dominates over nurture. This belief, however, has now shifted entirely — I now feel that nurture matters far more.

This shift came from learning how children actually learn (my education at Harvard helped). It is also connected to my education in scientific concepts like the evolutionary history of the homo sapiens as species. Understanding how we are brought up during our childhood opens up opportunities to understand who we are today. It’s also the key to making ourselves overcome certain limitations our upbringing may have brought to us. Understanding our childhood is the first step in overcoming these limitations.

This raises the question: what’s the key to a good nurturing in childhood?

I think the prominent answer to that lies in love. If a child receives love from their parents, or from a “concerned adult”, it creates a powerful sense of stability in children. This feeling of stability extends well into adulthood.

A lack of love between parents often becomes visible in a child’s upbringing. It can make a child feel very insecure or afraid. Continuous fighting between parents can also cause insecurity in a child. This insecurity may well extend into adulthood. In cases when one parent is missing, the other parent’s role becomes even more crucial. They must ensure their child gets unbiased love from them. I refer to this love as “positive love”. It’s the kind of love you’d expect Harry Potter’s parents to give to him. It’s the kind of love that makes you brave, courageous, kind, unafraid of failure, and empathetic to others.

Then, there’s also the kind of love we may refer to as “non-positive love”. A good example of that love is what Harry’s cousin Dudley or Harry’s nemesis, Draco Malfoy, received. Though unconditional, this kind of love had made both Dudley and Malfoy deeply insecure, turning them into bullies. It made them consistently compare with others, and nudged them to harm Harry at every opportunity they got. It’s the kind of love that makes anyone a coward, cruel, rude, clingy, selfish, jealous, and afraid of failure.

Few traits of Positive love	Traits of Non-positive love
Mostly driven by love between parents /concerned adult	Mostly driven by loss of love between parents; fighting/bickering between parents/concerned adult
Children don’t often compare themselves with other children	Children compare themselves with others, primarily driven by parents need of comparison or fear
Children are not afraid of failure because they know they can fall back on their parents; parents encourage failure as a positive learning experience	Failure is considered a reflection of parent’s report on their parenting; children feel failure is the end of the world; they hesitate in feeling dependent on their parents
Mostly make children kind, secure, brave, and empathetic to others	Mostly make children cruel, clingy, and show lack of empathy to others
The kind of love we believe Harry Potter’s parents would have given him if they were alive	The kind love given to Dudley, Harry’s cousin; or to Draco Malfoy, Harry’s nemesis at Hogwarts

Kinds of love that children get from parents/concerned adults

There’s a third kind of love too which is nothing but the “absence of love”. Under this condition, the child often feels conflicted with the concept of love itself. Having no sense of what that feeling is, they feel disconnected with their surroundings. A feeling of emptiness, or in some cases, abandonment takes over.

In Harry’s case, after he went to Hogwarts, he understood that he was loved by his parents. He realized this even though they were dead. He understood that love can be felt even when the person is not there with you anymore. The “absence of love” happens when, despite the presence of the parents/concerned adult, the child doesn’t get love.

As children grow old, they also fall into one of these categories as adults. This happens because of the intimate experience of going through it with their parents or a concerned adult. In a way, the children turn into their parents.

This categorization sticks through our adult life unless we take concerted efforts to understand our upbringing and make efforts to transform us into “positive lovers”. The natural categorization influences us to reflect positive, non-positive or absence of love in almost all aspects of our lives. This includes who we date and marry, and what career we choose. Most importantly, it involves how we raise our own children (if we choose to have them).

But what’s the process of becoming a “positive lover”? In my opinion, it has three steps to it:

Analyze and acknowledge the kind of love we received in our childhood. It is important to be non-judgmental to our parents/concerned adult while doing this exercise.
Determine our current category (positive, non-positive, or absent) as an adult.
Identify concrete actions/steps towards becoming a positive lover. Writing these steps are helpful.

The third step is crucial because it will determine the type of children we will raise. The children we will raise is directly based on the type of adult we are while raising them. Personally, for me, having the idea of children excites me. Many of my friends and I are at a stage where we are planning to have kids. Some of us already have them. For my future children, I want to make sure that I provide them with “positive love”.

Of late, I have realized that parenting is probably one of the most powerful tools for self-transformation too. When we will choose to parent differently — with more awareness, empathy, and intention — I believe that we will start to heal parts of ourselves we didn’t even know were wounded. We will begin to notice patterns in our own behaviors that once went unquestioned. We will pause before reacting, will listen more closely, and will try to give our children the kind of love we may have missed.

Of course, none of this could happen without taking the first step in acknowledging that our behaviors as an adult are a reflection of our upbringing. Accepting that is in itself a daunting task. By choosing to acknowledge it and raising our children on the foundation of “positive love” , we aren’t just shaping our children’s lives — we are also reshaping our own. Parenting, in that sense, isn’t just an act of giving. It’s also a process of becoming. We get a second chance at childhood through the eyes of our kids. And in that second chance lies the possibility of deep, lasting change.

Understanding the kind of love we received as children isn’t just about looking back — it’s about taking charge of who we become. Whether we grew up with positive love, non-positive love, or the absence of it, we always have the power to rewrite our story – and in turn, writing the story of our children’s lives.

An Endless Epiphany

Understanding Indian Education and how to lead a good life

Category Archives: A Good Life